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The North and the South, or, Slavery and Its Contrasts (XHTML)
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Proslavery novel by Caroline Rush, published in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe (Philadelphia: Crissy and Markley, 1852). Digitized by the Antislavery Literature Project.
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<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;color:windowtext'>[ </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
11.0pt;color:windowtext'><img width="405" height="800"
src="northandsouth_files/image001.jpg" /> [title page] </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;color:windowtext'>THE</span></b><b><span
style='color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:28.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;color:windowtext'>NORTH AND SOUTH,</span></b><b><span
style='color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:9.5pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:9.5pt;color:windowtext'>OR,</span></b><b><span
style='color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:16.5pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;color:windowtext'>SLAVERY AND ITS CONTRASTS, </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='color:windowtext'>A TALE OF REAL LIFE. </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:10.5pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:10.5pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:10.5pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;color:windowtext'>"TRUTH IS" STRONGER
"THAN FICTION."</span></b><span style='color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='color:
windowtext'> </span></p>
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<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>This is an annotated text of Caroline
Rush’s </span></b><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>The North
and the South, or, Slavery and its Contrasts</span></i><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>, published by Crissy and Markley in
Philadelphia in 1852. Original spelling, punctuation and page citations have
been retained; minor typographic errors have been corrected. </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>This electronic edition has been
prepared for the Antislavery Literature Project, Arizona State University, a
public education project working in cooperation with the EServer, Iowa State
University. Digitization has been supported by a grant from the Institute for
Humanities Research, Arizona State University. </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Editorial annotation by Joe Lockard.
Digitization by Noel Borde, </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Mahesh Bhutkar, Nilesh Ralbhat, and
Manoj Salvi of NetConnect India. All rights reserved by the Antislavery
Literature Project. Permission for non-commercial educational use is granted. </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='color:windowtext'>[unnumbered page] </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Introduction
</span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";color:windowtext'> </span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Caroline E. Rush was a mid-nineteenth
century Philadelphia writer who, alongside <i>The North and the South</i>
(1852), published three proslavery novels. These novels were <i>Way-marks in
the Life of a Wanderer: The Incidents Taken from Real Life</i><b> </b>(1850), <i>Robert
Morton, or The Step-mother, a Book Founded on Fact</i><b> </b>(1850), and <i>The
Dew-drop of the Sunny South; A Story Written from Everyday Life</i><b> </b>(1851).
Her literary reputation, never large, was limited to the decade of the 1850s.
There are no critical treatments of her writing currently available, and only
the briefest mention of her proslavery novels appears in the critical
literature. Little biographical information currently is available concerning
her life. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> <i>The North
and the South, or, Slavery and its Contrasts</i>, defends Southern culture and
slavery by comparing the supposed benevolence of slavery with the rapacious
social cruelty of the Northern states. Rush writes in explicit response to
public sentiment against slavery aroused by publication of Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s <i>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</i>, published beginning 1851 serially in the
Washington antislavery newspaper <i>The National Era</i>. This novel belongs
to a wave of counter-fiction and prose attacks against <i>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</i>.
See Alan Dowty, “Urban Slavery in Pro-Southern Fiction of the 1850s,” <i>Journal
of Southern History</i> 32 (1966) 1:25-41, and Barrie Hayne, “Yankee in the
Patriarchy: T.B. Thorpe’s Reply to <i>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</i>,” <i>American
Quarterly</i> 20 (1968) 2, 1:180-195. One of many Northerners writing
pro-South texts, Rush makes clear that her purposes lie in defending slavery,
beginning the first chapter in an authorial voice and writing: </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:windowtext'>“I do not for a moment imagine that any thing I can write can
equal in style, logic or depth, that far-famed work of Mrs. Stowe, which has
aroused a nation’s sympathy. ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ is a highly wrought fiction,
abounding in touching incidents, and clothed with dangerous sophistry, that
indeed looks so much like truth, that it is often mistaken for it.” (9) </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>The truer
slavery, Rush argued together with many defenders of slavery, lay in northern
industrial cities where exploited workers ‘toil their weary way from the cradle
to the grave, and whose worn, emaciated frames…sink into that quiet rest never
known in life.” (10) Rush writes that she had daily social contact with
abolitionists and opposed slavery, but lived in the South for three winters and
learned that plantation life was entirely different from her suppositions. She
states that Stowe’s book is “an unjust and unfaithful picture of Southern life
and character,” and “I do not deny that some such facts may have occurred, but
as to their being matters of common incident, I do most fully, certainly, and
unconditionally deny.” (12) For a discussion of Rush and the factuality of
romance literature, see Zeno Ackerman, “’Working at Romance’: Poetics and
Ideology in Novels of the Antebellum American South, 1824-1854,” Ph.D.
dissertation, Universität Regensberg, 2004, at 193ff. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> Rush writes
from a deeply racialist, racist and white supremacist position. She states
that while she would not refuse blacks kindness, the white race has “more
honor, honesty, affection, virtue, every thing in fact, that tends to exalt the
mind, and purify the character.” (14) She believes blacks to be “an idle,
worthless, and improvident race,” and suggests that her Philadelphia readers
walk through the mostly-black Seventh Ward with its “abodes of sin and
debauchery” to witness the truth of her assertion. (15) Rush condemns northern
abolitionists for philanthropic hypocrisy, comparing her own charitable
contributions and those of proslavery Southerners with those of ungenerous
members of the Anti-Slavery Society. (17; also 47) She points to malnutrition
and starvation among factory workers and the poor in northern cities as a
manifestation of “white bondage” (21) that she alleges abolitionists ignored in
favor of intervention into Southern culture. The tragic hero of her novel is a
young woman, Gazella, “one of those White Slaves of the North whose sufferings
are unheeded…in whose gentle, uncomplaining life of toil and privation, is
crowded more real and degrading slavery, than falls to the lot of any twenty
slaves of the South.” (31) Or, when poverty causes a white mother to relinquish
a child for adoption, Rush writes: </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:windowtext'>“Say what you will, the affections of the Negro are never so
strong as those of the white man. The tenderness that is bur natural in the
breast of a white mother, is very much lessened in the blacks, and I have here
convinced you that the bondage of poverty, forces a lady to give up her child
to the care of strangers, with scarcely a hope of ever seeing her again. So
then, here is another proof of the slavery that exists in the North.” (238) </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:windowtext'>Throughout the novel, Rush elaborates an antagonistic
comparison between poor Northern whites and satisfied Southern black slaves,
arguing that slavery protects blacks from far worse exploitation and
oppression. While she voices concern for the welfare of the urban working
classes, that concern is deployed to instantiate alleged failures of
abolitionists to reform conditions in northern cities. Frequently Rush
employs personal witness interspersed in the narrative to evidence such
conditions. For example, she complains </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:windowtext'>“How little do your Abolitionists seem to think or sympathize
with such cases of cruelty as this…I lived, myself, within a few doors of a
so-called respectable family, who had a little bound girl…They dressed her in
the meanest tatters, fed her with what was scarcely fit for a dog, and made her
to work so hard, that the flesh absolutely left her bones, and she was little
more than a walking skeleton. They used to whip her so unmercifully, that her
cries for help resounded through the neighborhood…” (99) </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='text-indent:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:windowtext'>Rush compares this adversely to the South, where she asserts
that masters used whipping very sparingly and only as a disciplinary last
resort. Rather, she states, “No one has a right to draw inferences and declaim
against abuses, until they are positive that such abuses exist, and it is very
certain that no intelligent, sincere, plain-spoken man or woman will go through
the Southern country, as I have done, and come back and write a book on the
cruelty of masters to their slaves.” (100) Concern for distant uncertainties,
Rush argues, is misplaced where there are near-at-hand certainties of poverty,
she informs readers, where “you live in the midst of poverty that you never
see; while your houses are within hail of those poor wretches, who are starving
for the bread thrown to your dogs, and while you continue to grind down the
wages of that most desolate and pitiable class of all the poor, the plain
needle-women.” (131) With such arguments and a sentimental novel plot upon
which to illustrate it, Rush provided a prose fiction echo of Southern demands
that the Northern states not interfere with slavery and instead recognize the
suffering caused by their own economic system. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Plot
Summary </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> The novel
traces the mostly-declining fortunes of the Harley family, from a wealthy
merchant home in New York City to obscure poverty in a Philadelphia slum
district. Frank Harley, the father, makes a poor business decision under the
influence of alcohol, goes bankrupt, loses his health, and can no longer work.
Once a rich woman, Mrs. Harley becomes a seamstress in order to support their
seven children, work in which her eldest daughter, Gazella, joins. Despite
hard work their living conditions remain desperate; an infant daughter, Ida,
dies of fever. Entries from Gazella’s journal constitute long passages of the
novel. They describe and ever-continuing process of impoverishment,
degradation, and the depredations of disease. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> To reduce
household expenses, the Harley family apprentices its children and a continuing
string of tragic consequences result. One daughter, Lily, goes into service
with the Anson family, where she is severely mistreated and whipped. Another
son, Harry, is placed with a Chester County farmer, Timothy Hardgripe, and gets
heavily overworked and beaten. Ellen, placed with another farm family outside
Philadelphia, is so abused that she commits suicide by drowning herself in the
Schuylkill river at age ten. Yet another son, Frank, is disabled and can help
his family only by weaving baskets. Only Rose, twin sister of Lily and adopted
by the Atlees, a proslavery Quaker family with homes both in Philadelphia and
on Maryland’s eastern shore, receives a good education and opportunities. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> The father,
Frank Harley, eventually succumbs to his ill-health and is buried alongside his
two children who pre-deceased him. After Harley dies, his widow bears a final
child, once again named Ida. The family’s misfortunes are further compounded
when the now-widowed mother is seized on a false and malicious complaint and
lodged in Walnut Street prison, from where she obtains release through the
assistance of the Atlees. Dire circumstances cause the loss of another child.
During a visit in the North from her Mississippi plantation, the wealthy Mrs.
Dunlap pays a charitable visit to the Harley family and adopts Ida, now age
two. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> Troubles
continue to plague the Harley family; some survive them, and others succumb.
Gazella, who has sustained the family and her mother, dies after a long
illness. Harry fights with his master and is imprisoned on false charges of
horse-stealing. He gains release after a trial that reveals his master’s
abuse, and is offered a sailor’s berth on a merchant vessel owned by Mr.
Norton, whose wife has befriended the Harley family. He becomes a sea captain;
his brother Frank becomes a scholar. Lily lives with her mother, but as a woman
embittered by her childhood mistreatment. Rose becomes a governess at a
Southern plantation, marries well, and becomes a satisfied mother. Ida, raised
in Mississippi, becomes the happily-married mistress of her adopted family’s
plantation. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Digital
Editions </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> Two further
Rush novels are available in digital editions via the Wright Collection at
University of Indiana: <i>Way-marks in the Life of a Wanderer</i> [</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#00639A'>http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/wright2/wright2-2139]
</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>and <i>The Dew-drop of the Sunny South</i>
[<a href="http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/wright2/wright2-2137"><span
style='color:#00639A;text-decoration:none'>http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/wright2/wright2-2137</span></a></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#00639A'>]. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#00639A'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> <b>— Joe Lockard </b></span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">[unnumbered page] </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>TO</span></b><span style='font-size:14.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b> </b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><i><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>A. M. Bolbrook, Esq. </span></i></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>OF NEW ORLEANS,</span></b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:14.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b>THIS VOLUME IS
INSCRIBED, AS A TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM,</b><b><span style='font-family:
Arial'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>BY HIS HUMBLE FRIEND</span></b><span style='font-size:
14.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:14.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="right" style='text-align:right'><span style='font-size:
14.0pt'>THE AUTHOR. </span></p>
<p class="Default"> [page v]<span style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-family:Arial'>
</span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
14.0pt'>PREFACE. </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
14.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> Go forth, little book, and do
your humble work in the world. Teach the rich to be humble; the proud to be
abased. Teach the philanthropist the true duties which devolve upon him, and
open his eyes to the misery and starvation that surrounds his own home. Teach
him love for his brethren of the South, and give him a sacred reverence for the
Union of his country. Give him strength to abjure all false doctrines, and
stand resolutely forth the champion of his beloved country's best interests.
Teach him the blessings, the loveliness, the beauty of Union, and give him a
new aim in life, the amelioration of the Slavery of his own colour, in his own
enlightened Northern home. </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> Teach him, oh! little book, to
seek in the vile alleys of our cities, for the widows and orphans of bankrupt </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>[page vi] </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">merchants, or ruined tradesmen: to draw from their obscurity,
souls rich in all the virtues, and bless by his assistance, countenance and
protection, the wretched victims of poverty and want. Teach him to feed the
hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, and to carry comfort to the
prisoner in his lonely cell, or the crowded common room of a goal. Teach him to
forget his own righteousness, his own purity, his own innocence of all evil, in
the desire to rescue souls from infamy, and win them to God. Teach him the
blessings that will be his, if he labors diligently and patiently for the
benefit of his fellow man; blessings that will smile upon his pathway through life,
shed an immortal halo around his memory when dead, and sparkle in his crown of
glory in the world to come. </p>
<p class="Default"> Teach him, too, the great uniting link that binds
together the whole human family: love, boundless illimitable love; born of God,
admiration of saints and angels; magical power, that withholds the punishment
of evil to guilty man, in all forgiving, all forgetting, all divine affection. </p>
<p class="Default"> Teach him wisely to regret the necessary evils of the
Slavery of the South, without bitter fellings, animosities or dissensions
towards those who are born and </p>
<p class="Default">[page vii] </p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">reared amid the peculiar rights and duties of the slaveholder.
Show him all the noble and generous traits of character of the men and women of
the South, and induce him to hold out his hand in brotherly unity of feeling
towards them, determined to eradicate other and more terrible evils which your
pages, oh! my little book, shall show him. </p>
<p class="Default"> If you will perform, oh! child of my brain, the duties I
require of you, then indeed I shall be blessed and happy, and shall thank God
that I have been your </p>
<p class="Default" align="right" style='text-align:right'><span style='font-size:
9.5pt'>AUTHOR</span>. </p>
<p class="Default">[unnumbered page 8 – blank] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">[unnumbered page 9] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>THE NORTH AND SOUTH, </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b>OR, </b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>SLAVERY AND ITS CONTRASTS</span></b><span
style='font-size:13.0pt'>. </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
13.0pt'>___________________</span> </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:16.0pt'> </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>CHAPTER I.</span></b><span style='font-size:14.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:8.5pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'>INTRODUCTION. </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
8.5pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'>"Magna est veritas et praevalebit." </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span><span
style='font-size:9.0pt'> </span><span style='font-size:14.0pt'>I</span><span
style='font-size:9.5pt'> DO</span> not for a moment imagine that any thing I
can write can equal in style, logic or depth, that far-famed work of Mrs.
Stowe, which has aroused a nation's sympathy. " Uncle Tom's Cabin" is
a highly wrought fiction, abounding in touching incidents, and clothed with
that dangerous sophistry, that indeed looks so much like truth, that it is
often mistaken for it. I know not if Mrs. Stowe actually believes what she
asserts: I presume she does, but it is very evident she knows little or nothing
of Slavery as it really exists in the South, and still less can she comprehend
or sympathise with the Slavery of the North. Perhaps she may go so far as to
deny its existence in these, </p>
<p class="Default">[page 10]<span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>
</span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.5pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">our glorious Northern States; she may say there are no slaves
around her own home; and in all the great cities of the North, who are born and
suffer and die; who toil their weary way from the cradle to the grave, and
whose worn, emaciated frames, at last give way in the struggle, and sink into
that quiet rest never known in life. </p>
<p class="Default"> I admire the picture of little Eva: indeed who would not!
Sweet, lovely child: embodiment of innocence and love and purity; every feeling
heart must be drawn towards her; but I too have known my little Evas; have
played with the golden tresses of their hair, and kissed their rosy lips. I
have looked into those deep mysterious eyes that told me of the heaven which
was their home, and have envied the parents who possessed them; but I have seen
likewise, the cheek grow paler, and the eye more dim; I have seen the soft
curls hang damp and matted around the pure spirit-like brow, and have watched
Death, as he bore away the slight fragile forms, so slight, so very fragile,
because they had suffered for bread: for even a small portion of that staff of
life, of which so much is given to the rich, and so often withheld from the
worthy and industrious poor. </p>
<p class="Default"> It has been my fate, from early childhood, to mingle much
with abolitionists. At first I rather disliked them, and had a singular fashion
of loving every thing belonging to the Southern country. I read of its genial
climate, its hospitable inhabitants, its mountains, </p>
<p class="Default">[page 11] </p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">lakes, and rivers; its woods echoing with the song of birds,
and variegated with many tinted flowers, so sweet, so fragrant, that one
breathed there the very essence of perfume: I loved that beauteous land,
liveing in my imagination, so fair, so goodly, with its groves of oranges, its
fields of cotton, and its plantations of rice and sugar cane, and I looked
towards it as did the poor Israelites who journeyed in the wilderness, looked
to their land of promise. But as I said before, I mingled daily with
abolitionists; I heard constantly, tales of horrid cruelty that the slaveholder
practised upon his victim: I saw many images of kneeling figures, who with
chained hands upraised to heaven, and big tears of agony rolling down their
cheeks, implored the mercy of God upon their helpless condition. My sympathy
became aroused, and my heart bled at the recital of these wrongs. Ah, what
would I not have dared, to benefit these unhappy beings who so awoke my
childish pity. Since then, however, I have grown older and wiser, and have
learned not to believe all I heard. I have spent three winters in the South,
and have lived on a plantation seven months at a time. I have been in daily
intercourse with negroes from other plantations, and have visited the different
quarters at all hours of the day. I have been thrown into intimate intercourse
with both master and slave, and have made it my business to enquire into the
truth of the statements I had heard. From the facts that I have gleaned, I have
drawn inferences,<span style='font-size:13.0pt'> </span> </p>
<p class="Default">[page 12]<span style='font-size:8.5pt;font-family:Arial'>
</span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">and these inferences condemn Mrs. Stowe's book as an unjust
and unfaithful picture of Southern life and character. I do not deny that some
such facts may have occurred, but as to their being matters of common incident,
I do most fully, certainly, and unconditionally deny. </p>
<p class="Default">Murder is a very terrible thing. Nothing can excuse it. God
gives life, and he alone should take it: but is murder never committed saving
and only by such savage creatures as had "Uncle Tom" whipped to
death. Have we no cases of murder here at the North, in the midst of our
enlightened communities, where are so many philanthropists: where are so many
persons anxious to do good, and to reform all abuses. Do we have no cruel
whippings, no torture, no forcing the poor overburdened frame to labor beyond
its capabilities. In a word, oh! free and happy citizens of the North, have you
no slaves in your midst. Have you no poor wretched, degraded fellow creatures
around you, who drag out a miserable life from day to day: who pine and sicken
and starve in loathsome cellars, in filthy courts and vile alleys, and who,
work as hard as they may by night as well as day, yet cannot provide themselves
with bread. If you will read these pages attentively, I will show you some few
pictures of the slavery that exists here. I will try to convince you that man
can never find a harder master than poverty: I will show you that children are
torn from the bosoms that loved and </p>
<p class="Default">[page 13] </p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">nurtured them, and exposed to every species of cruelty by this
hard tyrant: that some of these innocents meet an untimely death, while others
are cast into a prison, and a third and the most unhappy class of all, live
through all the years of childhood; are tortured, goaded, and lashed until
every refined sensibility is totally destroyed. </p>
<p class="Default"> But to return to the point from which I started: murder!
I should like to draw upon the memory of the public a little, and see if they
can recall the case which a short time ago appeared in most of our Northern
papers; where a so-called lady whipped severely a little bound girl she had
living with her, and then, after the whipping, shut her up in a room at the top
of the house for many days without food, and when at last she was released with
life just remaining in her, she died in a few hours of starvation. What was
this but murder, and yet the monster who perpetrated it, was never brought to
justice. The story was hushed up, and the rich lady is at liberty to commit as
many more murders as suits her convenience. </p>
<p class="Default"> Do you remember, reader, that little Eva overheard the
servants talking together about poor old "Prue" in "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," and telling each other that "<i>the flies had got to her.</i>"<i>
</i>Do you not think the flies might have got to that lonely garret, where,
shut out from all the world, with no human creature to shield her from the
cruelty of a fine lady, (God save the mark,) that poor little child, born
perhaps amid the </p>
<p class="Default">[page 14]<span style='font-size:8.5pt;font-family:Arial'>
</span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.5pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">sweet breathings of hope, nurtured by a tender mother, passed
the long long hours of the day and night, sore and bruised, and turning
uneasily on her bed of straw, and suffering at the same time the pangs of an
insatiate hunger? Impress this picture on your mind, oh! reader. Compare it
with the highly wrought scenes of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Remember that
"Uncle Tom" was a hardy, strong, and powerful negro, while this poor
victim was a helpless, defenceless child; of the same colour as yourself, and
surely not the less to be pitied on that account. Do you think I have been
telling you an idle tale, or repeating an isolated fact. Let the thousands of
slender fragile children, in each of our great cities, children covered with
the coarsest garments; their little feet bare; their backs bowed over with the
weight of the heavy burthens they have to carry; their features sharp and
pinched; let these poor children answer for me: let their sorrows plead for my
truth. Let their utter wretchedness convince the wonder-working abolitionists,
that justice, as well as charity, begins at home. I would never refuse to do
a kind action for a person because that person happened to be black, but I
would far rather relieve the suffering of my own colour, because I believe they
stand far more in need of relief, and are far less apt to be relieved. I find
too, in my own race, more honour, honesty, affection, virtue, every thing in
fact, that tends to exalt the mind, and purify the character. I know quite well
what my neighbor of the opposition </p>
<p class="Default">[page 15] </p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.5pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">will say to this. He will tell me to free the blacks: to
educate the blacks, to refine the blacks, and I shall find that they are in
every respect equal to my own race. Then I would ask, why have we not some
proofs of the elegant degree of refinement and cultivation to which my colored
brethren can aspire, in the forty thousand and upwards of free blacks, that
form part of the population of Philadelphia? They have had schools and ample
instruction: friends have been numerous and kind: money has not been wanting,
and yet, what are they now, to-day? Do they make any progress in the social
scale? Are they not an idle, worthless, and improvident race? Do not our
abolitionists as a general thing, keep white servants, declaring that the
blacks are so impudent and so lazy, that they can do nothing with them? If any
one doubts the truth of these assertions, let them take a walk some day through
St. Mary, Baker, or Small streets, and numerous other lanes and by-ways, where
they will find mostly colored people, and if they do not see and acknowledge
some of the <i>blessings </i>of freedom to the colored population, I make a
great mistake. The horrors of these abodes of sin and debauchery, would be too
shocking for ears polite. I will pass over them, and only hope that the doubter
will call and examine for himself. </p>
<p class="Default"> Let me relate a little instance of the unbounded love the
noble-hearted abolitionists have for their "down<span style='font-size:
10.5pt'>-</span> </p>
<p class="Default">[page 16]<span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>
</span></p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:11.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">trodden colored brethren." There was a period of my life,
when I had the time to do some little good to the poor. I visited in a certain
ward, and I heard one day of a poor black woman, who was lying very ill in a
garret. She needed fire, food, a doctor, medicine, in short every thing that
was necessary to make her comfortable. I went to see her, and found she was
indeed in very destitute circumstances. I went to the overseers of the poor and
got her some wood. I called upon the physician of the ward, and got him to
visit her. He gave an order for her medicine, and her food from day to day I
provided from my own purse, which was, to say truth, none of the heaviest. </p>
<p class="Default"> Under these favorable circumstances, Mary Ann grew
better, but her disease was one not easily cured, and she lay for a long time
on her bed perfectly helpless. I bethought me one day of a very rich lady who
lived in an adjoining street, and who, by sending a servant through the
gate-way of her house, could reach Mary Ann in two minutes time, with any
little delicacy the poor invalid craved, and the rich lady could so
conveniently spare. Now, be it known, this lady was a leading abolitionist, had
traveled over the country making speeches in favor of her society, and was
emphatically called among her brethren and sisters, a great light. None gave so
freely to the cause as she. A thousand dollars a year, at the very lowest
calculation, this good creature expended on her favorite </p>
<p class="Default">[page 17] </p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-size:10.5pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">hobby. Her reputation for liberality was unbounded, and to her
I resolved to go and plead for poor Mary Ann. </p>
<p class="Default"> Accordingly with this resolution, I called on the
philanthropist. I told her of the distressing poverty and illness of this
daughter of her favorite race. I told her the little I had been able to do for
her, and hoped that she would now take this case in hand as it was so near her
own home. She told me to give myself no further uneasiness upon the subject;
assured me she would attend to it immediately, and I left her with great
satisfaction of mind. </p>
<p class="Default"> The next day I went to see Mary Ann. My lady had not been
there, nor the next, not the next. On the fourth day I called: she had been
there: complained dreadfully of the steepness of the stairs that led up to Mary
Ann's garret: gave her a great deal of good advice about loving God, and
obeying his commandments, told her to read her bible, and closed the interview
by opening her pocket book, and taking there from a quarter of a dollar, which
she handed to Mary Ann, telling her at the same time not to be extravagant. She
then left her, and from that day to this, Mrs. Makeafuss has never been seen or
heard tell of in Mary Ann's garret. </p>
<p class="Default"> Such is the character of one of the pillars of the
Anti-Slavery Society. All of them are not so ungenerous. I met a few days since
a gentleman, a merchant in Front street, with a heart so truly liberal, </p>
<p class="Default">[page 18] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">with a conviction so earnest that he was in the right as
regarded his peculiar notions, that I could not but feel sympathy for him. He
expressed, too, so much love for the Southern people, and had so much good
feeling for all men, that his abolitionism excited my pity rather than anger. </p>
<p class="Default"> Permit me here to introduce a few remarks by an editor of
this city, whose comprehensive view of the matter, has placed the whole case in
a nut-shell. I feel that whoever reads them with attention, must admit the
truth of all that is contained in them. </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
14.0pt'>STARVATION AND FICTION</span>. </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default"> "The extraordinary demand which has prevailed for
the Abolition work of Mrs. Stowe, has extended, we perceive, to England, where
it is exciting some considerable amount of virtuous indignation. They are, of
course, in a condition there to feel a just abhorrence of the inhumanity of
their cruel white brethren on this side of the Atlantic. Every thing is correct
and delightful there; no misery in the British islands—no brutal task-masters
to grind down the miserable white slaves in the mining or manufacturing
districts of free, happy old England! Well may they look on our poor 'Uncle Tom
and his Cabin' with a ravenous sympathy, and possibly an amelioration society
for the relief of our suffering slaves may he started in the very heart of the
land, among their work-house paupers. Auxiliaries could be formed in the
purlieus of London,<span style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
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<p class="Default">[page 19] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">amidst the comfortable and happy thousands in the under-ground
lodgings, in the dump and suffocating cellars, in the stifled courts and
alleys, and fever-fed rookeries, where the pure light of heaven and a fresh
gasp of air never enters. The throngs there who linger in sickness and
starvation, with no one to care for them—no hand to do a friendly office as the
soul is being starved out of its wasted tenement—whose festering misery would
make the change from its charnel-house to a negro's cabin, a perfect paradise,
they could feel for 'Uncle Tom,' and, poor souls, do all they can for the
cause. The 'cabin' of the black man, though a palace, compared with the kennels
in which the white paupers herd and sicken and die, we have no doubt will do a
great work in England.—There is need of some sort of effort there, judging by
the shocking pictures of misery—not merely among the worst of all human slaves,
the manufacturer's paupers—but in the very centre of English civilization,
London itself. What pictures are presented to us, constantly, of wretchedness
and suffering there. Look at a single instance: </p>
<p class="Default"> "An English paper says, that Coroner G.S. Brent
held, lately, an inquest at Gray's-Inn lane, London, upon the body of Jonathan
Nichols, who had been a school-master. With all his industry, he could
sometimes only earn but a few pence a-week. The wife of the poor man was a
paralytic, and on the scanty earnings of the husband they sustained a miserable
existence, eked out by <i>one loaf of bread a week </i>from the<span
style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
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<p class="Default">[page 20] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">parish, and buoyed up by the hope of coming into possession of
a small estate to which he was entitled. </p>
<p class="Default"> "For the last twelve months he had been gradually
sinking under absolute starvation, and was found at last by his wife one
morning in bed, dead by her side. On the day following his decease, the paper
states, he became entitled to £120, and £60 a-year thereafter. The foreman of
the jury expresses his horror at the supineness of the parochial authorities,
and the jury rendered a verdict in accordance with the facts above stated. </p>
<p class="Default"> "It may seem strange that a teacher could not have
awakened some sympathy among his former pupils or their parents. But we
suppose, like the crocodile philanthropists in our own country, they were all
members of some society for the relief of far-off suffering, which has no
existence except in their own distempered imaginations. In England, as here,
there are an abundance of Mrs. Jellybys, mock-sympathisers, furious declaimers
against imaginary or distorted ills, and occasionally authors, who pervert the
genius that might do good into plausible engines of misrepresentation; making
even their fine talents a curse rather than a blessing. </p>
<p class="Default"> "The case of the poor school-master is but a type of
a large class of similar sufferers. Nay, his misery was far less, because of so
much shorter duration, than the life-long misery of whole families, whose
entire existence, from the lisping infant, almost, to the feeble exhaustion of
premature old age, is prolonged in the </p>
<p class="Default"><span style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default">[page 21] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">poisoned atmosphere of pent-up factories. Talk of negro
cabins! why what a mockery of human wrong and outrage, to mention the worst
ills of negro slavery in contrast with this white bondage—a bondage from which
there is no relief but in death. A contrast still more strongly marked from the
fact, that in the one case there are always those who have the strongest
motive—self-interest—to feed, clothe, nurse and care for the toilers, while in
the other, food or clothing, or sickness, suffering, or even death, is a matter
of no concern whatever, since even death itself is no loss to the task-master.
But while sympathising over the starvation of the poor school-master and his
paralytic wife, we see this enquiry made: </p>
<p class="Default">'Could such an instance possibly occur in the United States?
We have misery enough, and poverty enough, it is true, especially in our great
cities; but a case like this, we are sure, can find no parallel amongst us.'<span
style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default"> "Indeed! How little do ' Uncle Tom's' sympathisers
know or care about the suffering or the misery that exists among their own
colored dupes in all our principal cities. Since the account of the English
starvation reached us, we read, in one of the papers of our city, this
paragraph:<span style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default"> "DIED <span style='font-size:9.5pt'>OF STARVATION</span>.—The
Coroner on Saturday held an inquest on the body of Ann Maria Wilson, a colored
woman, aged about thirty-five years, who lived in Baker street, below Seventh.
The jury returned a verdict that she died 'for want of food.'" </p>
<p class="Default">[page 22] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default"> "That is exactly to the point, and shows how little
our hypocritical fanatics really know or care about the poor slave. What do
they care—the notoriety seekers, the convention spouters, or fiction
writers—how many slaves may he coaxed or stolen away from kind masters and
comfortable homes, to be left in the putrid dens of Baker street, to die of
neglect and starvation? Do they know or care how extensive a system of fraud
may be practised by noisy fanatics against the 'fugitive?'—taking advantage of
both his ignorance and his gratitude, to make him labor, (as is done to a
frightful extent,) until strength fails and health is exhausted, and then turn
him off to find his way into some airless, filthy cellar, in the city, to die?
There is a fearful amount of such inhumanity heaped up against some of the most
rampant of these pretended friends of the slave. There is much misery of a
deplorable kind owing its origin, directly or indirectly, to those who picture
out imaginary negro horrors at a distance; but have no heart for that
infinitely more deplorable cruelty that condemns amiable, respectable white
females, to perpetual but unrequited toil. Let the mind that has so much
sympathy to pour out on imaginary horrors, dwell for a moment on the condition
of the seamstress, who toils for eighteen hours out of twenty-four, dragging
out her sad existence on a pittance which barely keeps her alive. There may
possibly be some scenes of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' that have really existed, though
over-colored and exaggerated by the </p>
<p class="Default">[page 23] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">same fanatical influence that has been most active in
preventing the correction of the very abuses it now portrays. There are slave
abuses and slave suffering, but what are they, after all, to the real, bitter,
intense oppression that in our own midst sweeps its thousands out of a life of
penury into premature graves? </p>
<p class="Default"> "Fine, profitable speculations maybe made from negro
fiction. Wrought up into touching pictures, they may, under the spell of
genius, look like truth and have the semblance of reality, but where is the
genius to paint the scenes that exist in our own cities? —to awaken a sympathy
that shall give strength to the white, wearied, worn-out daughters of toil? </p>
<p class="Default"> "For our own part, we<span style='font-size:9.5pt'> </span>have
no liking for slavery of any kind, and hence it is that we deprecate the
madness of those reckless intermeddlers in the affairs of others. The last
steamer brings us developments, made in the British Parliament, which confirm
our apprehensions of the ill-effect of officious and impertinent interference
of the fanatics who let their own white brethren starve at home, while their
sympathies are worse than wasted abroad. The deplorable effects of ill-timed
and ill-advised emancipation in Jamaica, Antigua, and the Mauritius Islands,
was such, the Earl of Derby himself declares, that the blacks were rapidly
relapsing into a state of barbarism. Were our mock philanthropists here to have
their own way, what a wretched condition, would they eventually sink our black
population to, and in their disunion madness drag down even the high hopes of
our own glorious republic. </p>
<p class="Default">[page 24] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">To pull down and destroy is all they can ever accomplish, and
this work of destruction can only he, if ever, accomplished by such specious
and plausible deceptions as form the staple of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Its sole
tendency, if not its sole aim, is to keep alive the bitter prejudices that
unhappily exist, to excite bitter passion and abhorrence, where brotherly
regard should alone prevail.<span style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"> "Heaven knows, we would rejoice to abolish any and
every species of slavery, the black as well as the white, in the North as well
as the South. We would gladly effect a universal emancipation of all classes
could it be done without injustice to any; if in eradicating one evil we should
not be overwhelmed with others of tenfold greater magnitude. Though we know that
most of the evils of slavery which fanaticism trumps up, have either no
existence in fact, or are the indirect results of disunion, fanaticism itself,
we should still rejoice to see the bondsman go free, and every slave walk forth
in the light of liberty. Let slavery of every kind be forever abolished. Such,
we trust, will be the happy termination of the bitter contentions, the
prejudices and discordances that have so fearfully threatened the stability if
not the existence of our republic. But falsehood, not misrepresentation, nor
detraction, however eloquent or plausible, can have any other possible tendency
than to keep back the great work of judicious emancipation, a work that can
alone be accomplished by those to whom the whole matter solely, justly and
properly belongs." </p>
<p class="Default">[page 25] </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'> </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'> </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>CHAPTER II. </span></b></p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'>THE MARRIAGE. </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'> </p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>"I
leave thee, father! Eve's bright moon </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:.5in'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>Must now light other feet, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>With
the gathered flowers and the harp in tune, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>
Thy homeward step to greet. </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Thou
in whose voice to bless thy child, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>
Lay tones of love so deep, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Whose
eye o'er nil my youth hath smiled— </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>
I leave thee!—Let me weep! </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Mother,
I leave thee!—on thy breast, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>
Pouring out joy and woe, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>I
have found that holy place of rest </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>
Still changeless—yet I go. </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Lips
that have lulled me with your strain; </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>
Eyes that have watched my sleep! </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Will
earth give love like yours again, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>
Dear Mother!—Let me weep! </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='margin-left:1.0in;text-align:center'><span
style='font-size:8.0pt'>MRS</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>. </span><span
style='font-size:8.0pt'>HEMANS</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>.</span> </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='margin-left:1.0in;text-align:center'> </p>
<p class="Default"> There is something of a peculiarly interesting character
in that crisis of a woman's life, when she stands for the last time beneath the
paternal roof, before going forth to try what realities the world has in store
for her, and for the being she has chosen to be her partner through life;
swearing to love, honor and obey him till death parts them. Alas, how many
there are who would start with terror and affright if those reali- </p>
<p class="Default">[page 26]<span style='font-family:Arial'> </span> </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">ties could be revealed. How many would come back into the
parent nest, and be content to become that most dreaded of all feminine
characters,—an old maid. </p>
<p class="Default"> One lovely morning in May, when the birds sang cheerily
on every tree, and all nature was beautiful, there assembled a large family on the
porch of a handsome country dwelling, the residence of a wealthy New England
gentleman, who had earned his fortune as a merchant in the city of New York,
but had now retired to the quiet shades of the country, and spent his time in
agricultural pursuits. A large family of daughters, beautiful, highly
accomplished and amiable, made this house the resort of the very best society
of the neighborhood. One after another the fair girls married and left home;
and now the loveliest flower of this lovely flock, the pride and joy of the
household, the gentle, sweet-tempered Gazella was bidding farewell to father
and mother, brother and sisters, ere she departed for another home. She had
stood that morning at the altar, and vowed herself away to the tall dark man who
stood beside her now, and whom she had chosen to be the arbiter of her fate. So
strange, so sudden are those attractions that influence the human heart, that
six months before, Gazella and the handsome stranger had never met, and now
their fate through life was woven so closely together, that nothing but death
could separate them. </p>
<p class="Default"> The bride wept: all brides do, I imagine, who leave such
happy homes, such tender parents, so many dear </p>
<p class="Default">[page 27] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">friends, who until that moment of separation, have constituted
their world. The tears rained from her dark blue eyes, as one after another
clasped her in the farewell embrace, but when she stood before her mother, that
mother who had been so fond, so indulgent, and yet so judicious, who had watched
over her in sickness, and guarded her mental health, guiding her thoughts and
feelings, correcting her faults; and forming her character with so firm and yet
so loving a hand; what wonder that a tide of sweet remembrances crowded upon
her mind and overpowered her; what wonder that she threw herself into those
arms, ever so tender and caressing, and sobbed aloud while pressed to that true
fond heart, suffering quite as </p>
<p class="Default">much as her own. </p>
<p class="Default"> But the bridegroom was becoming impatient at this scene,
we must confess not too flattering to his feelings: the horses pawed the ground
as if chafing at the delay, while the coachman walked to and fro upon the
terrace, casting ever and anon uneasy glances at the assembled party on the
porch. There came another hurried kiss, a closer embrace, a whispered word of
advice, a promise to write soon, very soon, and the bride was gone, seated in
the carriage, driven past the dear familiar objects amid which her innocent
life had passed, while he, the chosen one for whom she had given up all, was
seated at her side, his arm enfolding her slender waist, his lips breathing
sweet vows of love, and his dark eyes beaming upon her with </p>
<p class="Default">[page 28] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">all the brightness and intensity of man's deepest, holiest
affection: how could she dim the lustre of her beauty by those falling tears;
how could she help drying them, and turning her eyes full of their soft and
hallowed light, upon the noble face and form of him who was her husband. Ah!
holy confidence; ah! rare exstatic joy, that comes but once in a life-time,
why, oh why, is your season so fleeting, and why is the heart that has known
you, and lived to see your decay, not also gifted with the power to forget you.
A beautiful house in New York, furnished with all the adornments of wealth, all
the luxurious comforts that make life pass like "a golden holiday,"
waited to receive the bride. Superb paintings, some by the old masters, others
belonging to a newer school, were suspended upon the walls: well selected books
graced the shelves, and richly carved furniture filled the rooms. A large
garden belonging to the house was beautifully laid out and filled with choice
flowers. "Well ordered servants attended to the housekeeping, and had
every thing in readiness for the reception of the fair young bride and her
husband. They came: those two beings, radiant with health and happiness: young,
ardent and true, and loving each other so supremely, what could make them
unhappy? Frank Harley was a merchant, doing an excellent business in Courtland street,
standing high in the commercial world, with a reputation of the most
unblemished integrity. From his earliest childhood everybody had loved the
jovial, free-hearted boy, </p>
<p class="Default">[page 29] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">and the dark handsome man was not less dear to his friends. He
had a kind word for all, alike the rich and the poor. He never closed his heart
to the appeal of suffering, but sought instantly it came before him, to relieve
it. Frank's superb dinners and <i>petite soupers </i>were the delight of his
many friends. No gentleman had a finer stocked wine cellar. No wine merchant
could boast an array of labels to vie with the antiquity of Frank's. His house
became the resort of the gayest and most fashionable New York society, and the
pure, unsophisticated Gazella, until now so complete a novice in the world's
ways, became duly initiated into the follies and vanities that constitute the
happiness of the gay votaries of fashion. She was a beautiful dancer, and it
was Frank's delight to see her airy-like form gliding through the dance, with
any and every one of his gay young friends. At such times, dressed in the most
perfect taste, and brilliant with a beauty that time and sorrow has even yet
failed to obliterate, the fair young bride looked well worthy of her husband's
doting pride, and she gave herself up to the bewildering pleasure of the
moment, and the feeling of intense delight which bathed her senses in perfect
happiness. The soul-inspiring music, the brilliantly lighted rooms, the
delicious perfume of flowers, and the crowd of beauty and fashion, blazing in
lace and jewels, have sufficed to turn the heads and entrance the hearts of
more sedate persons than of an innocent country girl. Do not blame her that she
</p>
<p class="Default">[page 30]<span style='font-family:Arial'>
</span></p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">is happy. So little of happiness was mixed in the cup of that
sweet girl's fate, so much of sorrow, that we should rejoice at every moment of
her life that was not darkened by those storm-clouds that fell like a pall
around her fair young form, and well nigh broke her gentle loving heart. </p>
<p class="Default"> Years rolled on, and our pretty bride had changed to the
blooming matron, the mother of a large, fine family of children: all so near
alike in age and size, that one might liken them to a flight of steps. Gazella
the eldest, and named after her mother, was one of those mystic children, so
full of love and goodness, so free from the infirmities of humanity, that her
mother trembled when she looked at her and remembered that "whom the gods
love, die young." This fairy child, dear reader, is not a creation of the
fancy, but a real true character, taken from life, and vividly recalled to my
mind by Mrs. Stowe's picture of "little Eva." I can see at this
moment that meek and gentle child, with soft brown hair, and dark blue eyes,
filled with such holy light: I can see her as she moved about her father's
home, loving her parents as few children love; watching their slightest words,
anticipating their requests, and performing every office that the tenderest
affection could suggest. What more I learned of her as she grew to womanhood
you shall learn presently, but I want you to pay particular attention to the
unfolding<b> </b>of her character, as I wish to present her to you as an object
worthy to share some of the sym- </p>
<p class="Default">[page 31] </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'> </p>
<p class="Default">pathies you have been giving so lavishly to that abused
creature of the imagination, "Uncle Tom." Gazella was one of those
White Slaves of the North whose sufferings are unheeded; whose tears and
sorrows meet with no sympathy; in whose gentle, uncomplaining life of toil and
privation, is crowded more real and degrading slavery, than falls to the lot of
any twenty slaves of the South. </p>
<p class="Default"> We will pass from her to her brother Frank, eleven months
her junior. A cripple from his birth, and with extremely delicate health, the
puny boy was never so much noticed as his sister; but the mother felt all the
slights to her fragile child, and loved him the more dearly that he was ugly
and deformed. He was unattractive to his gay father, and still gayer friends,
and the mother was often chided for spending so much time in the nursery over
that cross, whining thing, but nothing could wean her heart from its devoted
tenderness, and the little Frank whined on through the helpless hours of
infancy, and unfolded at a very early ago, the treasures of a soul lighted with
the most divine intellect, and a heart filled with the most gentle affections. </p>
<p class="Default"> Next in order came Ellen, a fine rosy-cheeked girl, then
Harry, a bright high-spirited boy, the exact counterpart of his father. Then
Lily and Hose, twin sisters, only distinguishable by the marble-like paleness
of the one, and the fresh ruddy bloom of the other. Then Lucien, who bade fair
to be a spoiled and naughty boy, till the advent of two sisters at a separate
interval of two years, deprived him of the right to make every </p>
<p class="Default">[page 32] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">body miserable on account of his being the youngest. Talk
about spoiling the first born, indeed. Not all the first born children in the
world, stand the chance of being even half ruined, when brought into opposition
with one of these self-willed, saucy, pert creatures, who are introduced into
the parlor as the youngest; who take precedence at the table when company is
invited, for the same reason, and who as years roll away, and the doting
parents are convinced there will be indeed no more, become by and by, so
spoiled, so insufferable, so haughty, that they are a terror to the whole
neighborhood. Pray deliver me from a petted youngest child. </p>
<p class="Default"> I have now introduced to you a family of nine children,
but I have been a little too hasty, as two of them were not born at the opening
of my story. However, perhaps it is as well you should know what you have to
expect. I have selected the history of this one family, feeling that there has
been in the changing scenes of their eventful lives, many incidents to show the
Contrasts of Slavery, and to prove that it exists at the North as well as the
South: the only difference being in the color. </p>
<p class="Default"> Those who read the pages of this book, may have the
satisfaction of knowing that their sympathies are called into action for
persons who have lived and suffered all, and more than I can tell. The cry for
help has gone up to the Mercy seat. Is God deaf that he has not heard? Is his
arm shortened, that he has not saved? No! no, we must wait his time. </p>
<p class="Default">[page 33] </p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:2.0in;text-indent:.5in'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt'>CHAPTER III. </span></b></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:
"Courier New"'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'>FALLEN FORTUNES. </p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.5in'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>'Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with fortune,
</span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.5in'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>Must fall out with men too: what the declin'd is, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.5in'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>He shall as soon read in the eyes of others, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.5in'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies, </span></p>
<p class="Default" style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:.5in'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>Show not their mealy wings but to the summer.</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='margin-left:.5in;text-align:center'><span
style='font-size:8.0pt'> SHAKESPEARE</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>'</span><span style='font-size:8.0pt'>S TROILUS AND
CRESSIDA</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>. </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'> </span></p>
<p class="Default"> Frank Harley was living too fast. He drank too much; so
much, indeed, that it had become a fatal necessity to him: and he could not
attend to his business without having fortified himself by ample potations. His
naturally fine feelings and gentle affections were becoming blunted. He still
loved his wife: oh! yes, he always loved her. The fond affection he had
professed for her never knew change or abatement. He joyed in her smile; was
true to her as the needle to the magnet, and surrounded her with all those
delicate attentions with which their first acquaintance had begun; but Gazella
felt that all was not right, and a weight rested on her heart. Frank no longer
romped and played with the children as was his wont. He no longer filled his
pockets with toys and candies, that the little rebels might have the pleasure
of climbing upon his knees and finding them. The eye of </p>
<p class="Default">[page 34]<span style='font-family:Arial'>
</span></p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">love saw the cloud on his brow, and the shadows falling there,
and she longed to know, in order to share his disquiet. </p>
<p class="Default" style='text-indent:.5in'>What could it be that rested so
uneasily on his heart: what made him drink so deeply, and absent himself from
home till all the family had retired. Alas for our poor Gazella, and her
helpless children: reared in luxury, surrounded with all the delicacies of
fashionable life, they were on the brink of ruin. One more step and they
arrived at a turning in the road, dark, dreary and terrifying. A thousand paths
led through this dreary waste, but all were alike thorny and rugged; all alike were
filled with obstacles, and made the trembling soul shrink with horror at the
thought of surmounting them. Is it to be wondered at, that the eyes that shone
so late with happiness, were now filled with the bitter tears of unavailing
regret and hopeless misery? </p>
<p class="Default"> The New York Journal of Commerce one day announced to the
world, that Frank Harley was a bankrupt. He had stood security for a man that
he had believed as good as gold: he risked all on the venture, and lost a
fortune by it. It galled his proud spirit to owe a dollar, and he got his wife
to appeal to her family for the share of her father's property, which would one
day be hers. To ask was to obtain it, and the money was used to pay every
outstanding debt. But Frank Harley, beggared as he was in purse, and having a
large helpless family, felt that it was too late </p>
<p class="Default">[page 35] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">to retrieve his steps: perhaps his inaction might be
attributed in a great measure to the fact, that disease was preying upon his
vitals. Be that as it may, he would say—"If I was only young again, then I
might commence the world anew, but it is too late, I feel like an old man
withered before his time. My spirit is crushed. I cannot rise above this
terrible calamity." Poor Frank seemed like one without hope. He moved and talked
like one in a dream. The blow had been so sudden and so tremendous, that it had
stunned him, and a sort of moral paralysis benumbed his mind. His tender wife,
true to the nature of her sex, sought with tears and kisses to soothe his sad
heart. She tried to interest him in the children, but the sight of them only
served to add fresh poignancy to his misery. With hopeless despondency, the
more terrible that it was so unlike his former self, he would ask—"where
will they get bread to eat? who will buy them clothes to wear, or educate them,
or do what my foolish, nay, my wicked act, has deprived me of the power of
doing ? Oh! my God, if I could only die; if I could only know that dreamless
sleep of the dead; ah! what bliss, what happiness it would be, to forget what I
have been, and what I am. I could envy the madman, rattling his chains, for he,
blest wretch, has forgotten the blow that broke his heart." </p>
<p class="Default"> Some wives would have scolded, and told their husbands
that all this came of his foolishly trusting his fortune in such a dangerous
position; that if he would </p>
<p class="Default">[page 36]<span style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'> </p>
<p class="Default">have listened to her warning voice, all this evil might have
been avoided. But Gazella had been reared in a different school; her mother,
who was a tender and dutiful wife, had taught by her example the duties of her
position; and her precepts of affection, her devoted love, and above all, the
uncomplaining submissiveness of her life, became in turn the heritage of her
daughters. No word of reproach ever passed her lips, and she strove even to
hide her tears, lest he should blame himself as their cause. She accustomed
herself to the absence of all luxury, and tried to condense her duties that she
might have the more time to spend with her husband. He drank constantly,
seeking, no doubt, in the enchanting delusions of the wine-cup, forgetfulness
of the terrible calamity that had swept away his splendid fortune. How many are
there in this world of sorrow, who, like him, would wish to forget? </p>
<p class="Default"> Sometimes, when his strength and the weather permitted,
he would walk abroad and enjoy the freshness of the air. Oftentimes he would
meet an old friend, who would rejoice to see him once more at his old haunts;
but oftener still he met the boon companions of his prosperity, men towards
whom he felt a deep and sincere friendship, and just as he was about to stretch
out his hand with cordial warmth, he would feel himself restrained by the cold
look and the averted head, and the ruined merchant would feel the hot generous
blood suffuse his face as the iron entered </p>
<p class="Default">[page 37] </p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">his soul. What, then, was left to him but to seek again for
that delicious forgetfulness, that flowery cup, within whose precincts lay the
charmed essence of oblivion. 'Twas thus he sorrowed and thus he drank, until
his wine cellar was empty, his last dollar spent, his cough fearfully
increased, and the tender heart of his devoted wife breaking beneath the
accumulation of her misery. </p>
<p class="Default"> Until the last dollar was spent: the last dollar. Think
of that, oh! favored sons and daughters of fortune, who have never known want;
to whom life has been one long summer's day; for whose comfort all the
appliances of wealth have been lavishly afforded, and at whose simple word the
vaults of the bank open, and give up their bright treasures of silver and gold.
Think of the last dollar spent by one as delicately nurtured as yourselves—the
last dollar gone where are a family of seven children, the oldest only eleven.
The last dollar where the father, the provider, is stretched on a bed of
illness, for poor Frank, in a violent fit of coughing, ruptured a blood vessel
on the lungs, and lies prostrate, pale and death-like, while Gazella, sad and
broken-hearted, but nerved by the energy of despair to superhuman exertions,
watches over him and pays him all those delicate attentions with which a loving
wife ever surrounds the couch of her sick husband. </p>
<p class="Default"> But their last dollar was spent. Should she appeal once
more to her family? No; pride, affection, self- </p>
<p class="Default">[page 38]<span style='font-family:Arial'> </span></p>
<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'> </p>
<p class="Default">respect forbade it. Had they not blamed her husband? Had they
not accused him of cruelty and un-kindness?—her Frank, who had so loved her, to
whom she had given her young heart with all its rich mine of affection. No, she
could starve, she could suffer and die, but appeal to them again, never, never.
Something must be done, but what that something was, puzzled Gazella
exceedingly. She thought of every means by which she might earn money, and only
one available course seemed open to her pursuit, and that was to obtain plain
needle-work. She resolved to set forth at once, and seek employment in some of
the stores of the great metropolis. She bethought her of a gentleman's
furnishing store, down Broadway, opposite the Park, where for years she had
been in the habit of obtaining her husband's linen. She determined to go there
and ask the proprietor to give her shirts to make. It was a difficult task for
one so beautiful, so gentle, so unused to the world's rough ways; but when
necessity compels who can choose? Gazella was nerved with additional power,
when she remembered that it was for others and not herself that she was called
upon to make this sacrifice of her pride. Who is there that has not felt how
much easier it is to make exertions, overcome obstacles, and face the frowns of
a cold, unfeeling world, for the beings who look up to us for support and
protection, than it would be for ourselves? </p>
<p class="Default"> Before going out, the mother called her fair young </p>
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<p class="Default" align="center" style='text-align:center'> </p>
<p class="Default">daughter to her, and gave her charges respecting her father.
He was to be nursed—oh, so tenderly—and not to he left alone for a single
moment. Above all, if he awoke and asked for her, he must be assured she would
be back very speedily. She was going out on a little errand, to attend to some
business; it was not necessary to state what. She put on her bonnet and shawl,
and sallied forth. Her course lay through the most crowded part of the city,
and after traversing nearly a mile of the busy streets, she arrived at the
store which she had so often visited before, for far different purposes. </p>
<p class="Default"> Now, for the first time, the extreme delicacy of her
position struck the mind of Mrs. Harley. What an effort must it cost her to
enter that store, and enquire for employment, where she had so long been a
wealthy customer. Was it a foolish pride, think you, that made the
heart-stricken creature nervously pass on, and delay the moment of entering a
place now become so formidable to her? </p>
<p class="Default"> It sometimes happens, that one moment of life is big with
fate to the child of misfortune. Just as Mrs. Harley had returned and entered
the store, a carriage, drawn by two superb horses, drove up to the door, and a
lady, very elegantly attired, alighted from it and followed her. A quick glance
of recognition passed from her to the trembling figure that leaned over the
counter, talking to the proprietor of the store. The side face was turned
towards the stranger lady, and in </p>
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</span></p>
<p class="Default"> </p>
<p class="Default">its faultless contour she had no difficulty in recognizing the
once rich and fashionable Mrs. Harley. At this moment a young man came forward
to wait upon, the lady, and calling her by name, hoped he found her very well.
At the sound of this familiar name Mrs. Harley turned quickly, and was about to
give a cordial greeting to this friend, who had so often graced her hospitable
board, and shone a bright particular star at her assemblies; but the frail
summer-friend inclined her stately head without smiling, and turned at once to
enquire for the article she wanted. </