The
Liberty Cap.
Liberty
By .
[Gap in transcription—omitted2 characters]Boston:
Leonard C. Bowles.
18461846.
The
Liberty Cap.
It was the custom of the
Romans
when a slave was made free to take
him to the temple of the goddess Feronia,
and there to place upon his head a
cap in sign of his liberation,
and ever
after the goddess, in whose temple the
ceremony was performed with supposed
to be his guardian and protector.
The Romans lived before the time
of the great teacher of our religion,
and with but little of the light of the
pure and perfect truth he taught. They
were men of war and blood, who believed
that the strong should use the
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weak for their own selfish purposes,
and who really knew no better: and
so they
believed that slavery was right,
and though they did
not believe, as some
who call themselves
Christians say they
do, that their Gods had marked one
race of men with
a black skin to point
them out as slaves. Their slaves were
the captives they took in
war and
their descendants, without distinction of color.
We pretend to be a Christian nation,
to believe the religion of him who told
us to do “as we would be done by”, who
said that the substance of
religion was
to love God with all our heart and
“our
neighbor as ourselves”, and that our
neighbor was the poor and the suffering
and the oppressed, who told us that
God was our Father and that we were
all brethren, who told us to love one
another even as God
loved us. I say
we pretend to believe this: every week
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we hear it preached; we call ourselves
Christians, and pity the Bey of
Tunis,
though he has freed all the slaves in
his dominions,
because he is a heathen.
And yet in our country are three millions
of our brethren,
groaning under
a slavery far worse than that of the
heathen and bloody
Romans. We hold them
in bondage—we
ourselves—for
their pretended masters could not keep
them it if it were not for our
help. Yes,
we even go to war and fight bloody
battles to defend and perpetuate this
infamous wickedness.
Shall we do it any longer? Shall
there not be in all this Christian land,
one temple where the bondman can
find freedom? Here where we
profess
to love our brethren, shall there be no
guardian spirit, to go forth with its
holy
influence, for the protection of the suffering
and oppressed? Yes. Let that
temple be our hearts. Let that spirit
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be our words and deeds, mighty with
all the power of truth and right. Let
us not
cease from laboring till the Cap
of Liberty shall be placed upon the
head of every
slave, and their guardian
shall be a better than the heathen
goddess, even the spirit
of him who
preached perfect peace and perfect
love.
West Roxbury, 1846-05-09May 9, 1846.
Am I Not a Man and a Brother?
My country that nobly could dare
The hand of oppression to brave,
Oh how the foul stain canst thou bear
Of being the land of the slave?
His groans, and the clank of his chains
Shall rise with the shout of the free,
And turn into discord the strains
They raise, God of Mercy, to Thee.
The proud knee at His altar they bend,
On God as their Father they call;
They call Him their Father and Friend,
And forget He’s the Father of all.
His children He does not forget,
His mercy, His power can save;
And sure as God liveth, he yet
Will liberty give to the slave.
Oh talk not of freedom and peace
With the blood of the slave on your sod;
Till the groans of the negro shall cease
Hope not for a blessing from God.
He asks, “Am I not a man?”
He pleads, “Am I not a brother?”
Then dare not, and hope not you can
The cry of humanity smother.
’T will be heard from the south to the north,
In our halls and in poverty’s shed;
’Twill go like a hurricane forth
and wake up the living and dead.
The dead whom the white man has slain,
They cry from the ground and the waves;
They once cried for mercy in vain,
They plead for their brothers the slaves.
Oh let them, my country, be heard,
Be the land of the free and the brave,
And send forth the glorious word,
This is not the land of the slave.
Pic-nic at Dedham.
―, 1843-08-03August 3, 1843.
Dear Mother,
You asked me when I left you, to
write to you; I will remember what a
choaky feeling I had in my throat,
when I
was standing in our porch, and
I felt your arm around my neck, as you
said, “You
will write often to me, Hal,”
and yet I have written only once.
Well! I mean to make up now, and
write you a
real long letter; and one
reason is, I have got something to
write about. Uncle told
us the day
before yesterday that he was going to
take us the next day, to the pic-nic
at
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Denham, for they were going to celebrate
the 1843-08-01first of
August, and he must
be there. I did not think much what
it was all for,
but I knew it was a holiday,
and that was enough for me.
You may be sure I was up betimes:
we started soon after seven; uncle let
me drive;
George you know is a little
chap, he sat on the back seat with
aunt. We got to Dedham a little after
nine, and went directly
to the Town
Hall; there we found a great many
people round
the door, and a long
stream of folks just arrived from Boston
in the cars, and there was Dr.
Bowditch and a
number of other gentlemen
with stars on their coats, arranging
them so as to form a
procession. They
had ever so many beautiful banners.
Uncle joined them, and left me
in the
wagon with aunt. After the procession
was formed, they turned and passed
directly by us, so that I saw every
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thing; and what was the best of the
whole, the band of music was formed
entirely
of boys, and they played first
rate. They walked so slowly that I
could see what was
on their banners,
and read the inscriptions; I cannot remember
all, but I do some
of them.
One had on it a fine figure of a
black man, with his arms thrown up,
exultingly,
and his broken chains falling
to the ground, and his foot upon a
whip; the words
over him were, “This
is the Lord’s doing,” and underneath,
“Slavery abolished in the West Indies,
1834-08-01August 1st, 1834, Laus
Deo.” The
figure was finely done, and the poor
negro’s face was
full of joy; I thought
it almost handsome, and mother I do
wonder that I never heard
you or father
speak of the 1st of August. The next
one I remember was a
banner borne
by a boy about my age; on it were
these words, “Shall a republic
which
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could not bear the bondage of a King,
cradle a bondage which a King has
abolished?” Aunt told me that the
boy who bore this banner was the son
of the man who wrote the words, and
that his father had gone to that land
where there was no slavery, and I felt,
mother, that if I had been so unhappy
as to lose my
father, I should love to
carry a banner with his words on it, for
I should feel as if
I was doing something
to carry on his work.
Another banner had a liberty cap on
it, with these words, “God never made
a tyrant or a slave”. Another, “Our
fanaticism; ‘All men are created free
and equal’”. “Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself”. When you
and
father speak of the fanaticism of the
abolitionists,
you can’t mean this, I’m
sure. Another banner had these words
on it, “The
Almighty has no attribute
that can take sides with a slaveholder,2
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14”
and Thomas Jefferson’s name
under them: and yet Jefferson held
slaves, and so did Washington, but
Washington freed his in his last will.
One more I particularly noticed, for
our friend Dr. Channing’s name
was
on it. These were the words, “The
Union: we will yield every thing to it
but truth, honor, and liberty: These
we will never yield.” I forgot to mention
that one banner had on it the initials
of Garrison’s name surrounded
with an oaken wreath; and underneath
it this inscription, “I am in earnest!
I will not equivocate! I will not excuse!
I will not retreat a single inch,
and I
will be heard!” Uncle helped me remember
this. Well! the whole procession,
men, women, and children, all
marched to the boys’ music, which was
real good, to a fine large pine grove
about half a mile off. We went round
by another road so as to get there first
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and see them enter: they passed under
a beautiful arch of oak leaves and
evergreens, and slowly ascended the
side of a hill covered with seats, under
the tall pines which may define amphitheatre;
at the foot was a raised platform
for
the speakers, round which
they placed the banners, and pictures,
which I forgot to
tell you about. After
all had taken their places, Dr. Bowditch
called for three cheers for the
glorious occasion that had called them
together, and
oh! mother, they made
the old grove ring well with their hurras,
and how the hats
and handkerchiefs
did fly round! my great straw hat did
good service, and you know I
can
make a pretty good noise when I try for
it. Then they sang a beautiful hymn
written by Mr. Pierpont, and then Mr.
Allen
prayed, he did not, as you say,
make a prayer, he prayed: it was heart
work, his
prayer, I am sure. While he
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was praying I looked far, far up into
the clear blue sky through the openings
in the trees, and I never felt so
much as if God heard our prayers; and
oh, how I did
wish that the time might
come when we might be thanking God
that our slaves were all
free. Then
some appropriate passages from the
Bible were read.
After this they sang
another hymn written by Mr. James
Lowell,
and mother it was very beautiful,
I have got it for you, and you must
read it.
After this Mr. Pierpont spoke,
he was very entertaining, he put it to
vote which was most likely to make
men work, cash or lash—cash had the
vote:
he told us that freedom was
working as well for the masters as for
the slaves. Mr. Stetson spoke beautifully,
but mother, some how or other he
always makes me laugh. I can’t tell
you much about the speeches, at last
the
same boy that carried the banner,
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recited a poem called The Christian
Slave. Mr. Pierpont told the audience
that when they put up a slave on the
auction table, the auctioneer would
sometimes mention that she or he was
a Christian, in order to get a higher
price, and this was the subject of the
poem—it made my blood run cold to
think of selling Christians. The boy
spoke well enough, and I think that if
the men don’t all do something about
slavery soon, we boys had better see
what we can do, for it is too wicked.
After this came the collation, we had
to walk in a procession and place ourselves
four or five deep at the table,
and then get what we could; I hoped
to get some of
aunt’s cake that we
carried with us, but I did not, though I
got enough of somebody’s
else; for
they put the children forward, and I
remembered, mother, to help my neighbors,
arn’t you glad of that?
2*
2(3)v
18
After dinner there was a great deal
more speaking and some real good
singing; but what pleased me most
was an address from a man who had
been a slave. He was as
white as I
am, and a fine looking fellow: he
spoke very well: he said that they had
all come together to rejoice that eight
hundred thousand human beings who
had
been slaves were made free-men,
but if they knew what he knew, and
had felt as he
had what slavery was,
they would gladly all meet to rejoice
that one single man was
free; then he
spoke of what slavery was, and oh, dear
mother, I never felt so about
slavery
before; every boy ought to know what
American slavery is. When the whole
was over, and it was time to go, they all
joined together before they parted, in
singing Old Hundred. Now dear mother
just imagine a grand large
grove
of tall pine trees, with their branches
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crossing each other, so as to look like
the arches is of a grand cathedral, with
the blue sky for a ceiling, and at least
fifteen hundred people joining most of
them with their voices, and all looking
as if they did with their hearts and
singing
“From all who dwell below the
sky,” and to that glorious old
tune: it
seemed to me as if the spirit of old
Martin Luther was
there. I never had
such a feeling of awe in my life. I
wanted you and father to be
there; I
never felt so religious; England may
be forgiven a thousand sins for this
one act. Why do not all Christians
rejoice on this day?
When we were all seated in the
wagon again, and on our way home, I
told uncle that
I had had a beautiful
time. He said that “it was the most
glorious day in the
year to him;”
“greater,” I said, “than the fourth of
July.”
“Yes,” he said, “because it
2(4)v
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celebrated a bloodless victory, it was
won by perseveringly love and justice,
against selfishness and tyranny. It is
such a victory as this Hal, that we
abolitionists strive for, pray for, and are
willing to suffer for.” Then uncle told
aunt an anecdote he
had just heard,
that I think mother, you will like to
hear. He said that “five years ago
on the same day, the 1st of August, a
blind old man, a
minister of religion,
wished very much that there should be
some public
celebration of the event
that was then taking place in the West
Indies, that we republicans should join
these eight hundred thousand
souls in
thanks to God, that they were free,
that they were acknowledged to be
men. The good man could not inspire
those around him with his feelings
about it; but all the more did he keep
the hour holy in his own heart, so he
and his
daughter sat up that night till
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the clock struck twelve, and then he
asked her to play a solemn tune on the
piano and the blind old man and his
child sang by themselves at midnight a
song
of thankfulness and praise to God,
that at that moment the chains of slavery
were
unloosed from eight hundred
thousand of their fellow beings, and
that they were
restored to the rights
and dignity of men.”
“Surely,” said
uncle, “those two weak voices in the
stillness of that
solemn night, were
heard with more favor by the Almighty,
than the roaring of our cannons, and
the peals of our bells on the fourth of
July”—and
mother, I could not help
thinking so too. Is not this a good
long letter? I hope you
will not think
it is too long, but I could not help
telling you all about the first
of August.
I shall never forget it. Give my love
to father.
Your affectionate son,
Hal.
Lines
on Hearing of the
Terror of the Children of the Slaves
at the Thought of Being Sold.
When children play the livelong day
Like birds and butterflies,
As free and gay sport life away,
And know not care or sighs,
Then all the air seems fresh and fair,
Around, below, above,
Life’s flowers are there, and everywhere
Is innocence and love.
When children pray with fear all day
A blight must be at hand;
Then joys decay, and birds of prey
Are hovering o’er the land.
When young hearts weep as they go to sleep,
Then all the world is sad,
The flesh must creep and woes are deep,
When children are not glad.
Dialogue.
“I have been to aunt Elizabeth’s
this afternoon,” said a warm hearted
boy to his mother, “and have heard a
Polish gentleman tell her of the cruelties
inflicted upon his countrymen by
the Russian emperor. Why,
mother,
they are too horrible to believe; and
because they have made an effort lately
to recover their freedom, the emperor
has offered a large reward for the
head of every Polish nobleman, and a
great many hundred
heads have been
carried to him. The poor Poles have
no liberty, they
are banished to Siberia
for the least offence, and they make the
Polish
girls marry Russians whether
they like them or not.”
“I do pity the poor Poles, and I do
hate the
Russians.”
“And so do I pity the Poles,” said
the mother; “but,
Robert, there is a
nation as wicked and cruel as the
Russians that you perhaps have not
read any complete history of, and
which you ought to know something
about, and in many respects I think
them
worse than the emperor of Russia.
No correct history has yet
been
written of this people, for their historians
are afraid to tell the truth of
them
because they fear the people would be
angry and not read their books. Shame
on them for their mean cowardice and
what of principle! A few of their
poor
exiles, like this Polish gentleman,
tell of their wicked
deeds, and now and
then a traveller goes there, and brings
back information about
them, but if he
is not very cautious while there, his life
would be in danger. They
are a very
extraordinary people, and the Christian
world is but just getting acquainted
3(1)r
25
with their true character and history.
Shall I tell you about them,
Robert,
and then you shall judge whether the
Russians are any worse than they.”
“Do, mother,” said the boy.
“These wicked people, Robert, have
agreed among themselves to
take a
certain number of their infants as soon
as they are born, when they cannot
help
themselves, and condemn them to the
most wretched life that a human being
can endure. They say to each one of
these poor innocents, ‘Although the
good God has sent you into his beautiful
world that you may be happy and
enjoy existence, and learn to know and
love him, and by your obedience to his
laws here, make yourself fit for a higher
state of existence, yet we will as far as
we are able, deprive you of all these
blessings. The mother that bore you
and
has suffered so much pain for you,
on whose bosom you are now lying, to
3
3(1)v
26
whose eyes you are looking up with
such trusting love, shall have no right
over you, we will take you from her
when we please for our own purposes.
If
you are a boy when you grow
strong and your father feels proud of
his boy, then we
will tear you from his
arms and send you for our advantage
among strangers, who may
be cruel to
you if they will. If you are a girl your
fate shall be yet worse, and
your mother
who now presses you to her heart shall
pray for your death. If your
father or
mother should dare to defend you,
death shall be their reward. You shall
never learn to read: all that good and
wise men have uttered, all their inspiring
and inspired words embalmed in
books, you shall know nothing of; you
shall
wear the meanest clothing; you
shall be fed as the horses and pigs are
fed; there
shall be no true love for
you; you shall marry and unmarry at
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our bidding, for your husband, or your
wife shall not belong to you, but to us;
the light of your intellect shall be darkened,
the fire of your soul shall be
quenched, your spirit shall be broken.
We will shut out from you the knowledge
of the Universal Parent; you
shall know God only as a tyrant, not as
your Father in Heaven. Life shall be
hateful to you if you have a
soul.’”
“Horrible, mother, horrible! Can
this be true of any people?”
“Yes, my son, and this is not all.
When in spite of all their efforts commencing
at the cradle to extinguish the
souls of these poor, helpless beings,
some of them when they are grown up
come to a sense of their own rights and
try
to escape from these savages, they
hunt them with dogs and shoot them
down like wild
beasts. And if their
victims do escape, they do as the emperor
of
Russia does, they offer a reward
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to whoever will bring them back,
not, to be sure for their heads, because
their heads would not be of any service
to them, but alive that they may have
possession of them, and use them for
their own purposes, and then they often
punish them for having run away, so severely
that death would be
preferable.”
“Mother,”said Robert, “this is too
horrible; what
people can be so wicked?
where is this country?”
“You are living in it, my son; you
are one of its citizens; your father
pays
taxes to support the government
which sanctions and defends these
crimes against
innocent beings. This
country is now at war, as you know,
with
Mexico who has abolished slavery,
for the purpose of making this
infamous
system more secure and extending it
farther.”
“Mother,” said Robert, “I knew we
had slaves, and I always thought slavery
3(3)r
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was wicked, but I never knew it
was so bad. I never thought of their
treating children so; I supposed they
were kind to children.”
“They are, I suppose, as kind to
them as they are to little pigs, but they
are
so defrauded of all the rights of intellectual
and immortal beings. I have
not
told you half of its horrors. I
would not harrow up your young heart
by a relation
of all the slaves have to
endure, of all their bodily sufferings, of
horrors too bad
to think of. But all
I have told you is strictly true.”
“Whom, mother, do you mean by
the exiles who relate these things?”
“Whoever, Robert, dares to tell the
whole truth about slavery,
and says he
will have nothing more to do with it
in any way, is an exile from that
part
of our country where these wicked
things are done. A Polish nobleman
would be as safe with the emperor of
3*
3(3)v
30
Russia as an abolitionist in our Southern
States. Georgia has offered a reward
of five thousand
dollars for the
head of William Lloyd Garrison. And
even here in the free States, abolitionists
are spoken ill of and the world
hates them, and the friends of the
Southern slaveholders say all sorts of
evil things against them.”
“Are our men here willing to bear
these things, mother?”
“All but the abolitionists submit
quietly to them, and some even vindicate
Southern slavery.”
“What do the abolitionists do, mother,
what can they do against slavery?”
“I will tell you, Robert, what they
do, and what they have
done, and what
they wish to do; but I must defer this
to another time, and then I
will tell you
all about the abolitionists and their
purposes.”
Agrippa.
In the village of
Stockbridge lives a
black man by the name of Agrippa
Hull, who served in the Revolutionary
war. At the close of
it he was honorably
discharged; in testimony of which
he shows a certificate signed
by General
Washington. He was for some
years the servant of
General Kosciusko,
of whose generous and humane character
he
speaks with grateful love and
admiration.
Agrippa has an uncommonly fine
head, and is remarkable for his
excellent
understanding and good character.
By his industry, he has become possessed
of a valuable farm, which he now,
at the age of seventy-six, cultivates
himself. He is eminent for his piety,
3(4)v
32
and those who have heard him speak
at conference meetings which he is in
the
habit of attending with his white
neighbors, say that in prayer he is distinguished
for fervor and eloquence,
and for peculiar originality and
richness of his
language.
The acuteness and wisdom of his
views upon most subjects, and the wit
and force of
his illustrations, make his
conversation so impressive that you remember
what he
has said, long after
you have parted from him. During
an interview of perhaps half an
hour
with him, I was so struck with his remarks
that as soon as he left me, I
wrote down his very words, as I here
transcribe them, without any alteration
or
embellishment.
When I expressed to Agrippa my
opinion upon the subject of
prejudice
against color, he said,
“When there is a flock of sheep,
and some black ones among them, I
always think that, if they behave well,
they have as good a right to be fed as
the white
ones. God will not ask what
is our color, but what has been our
conduct. The
Almighty made all
colors. If we find fault with the work,
we find fault with the
workman. His
works are all good. A black, ugly
bottle may have just as good spirits
in
it as the cut glass decanter. Not the
cover of the book, but what the book
contains is the question. Many a good
book has dark covers. Which is the
worst, the white black man, or the
black white man? When a white man
says any hard thing to me about my
color, I tell him I
pity him, but I ask
him which is the worst, to be black
outside or in? When a black
man is
treated ill on account of his color by a
3(5)v
34
white man, and he bears it patiently
and only pities him, I think he has
a
chance to take a very high place over
the white man.”
“Once,” said Agrippa, “when I
was a servant to a
gentleman who was
very overbearing and haughty, we both
went to the same church. One
Sunday,
a mulatto gentleman, by the name
of Haynes, preached. When we came
out of meeting, my master said to
me,
‘Well Agrippa, how do you like nigger
preaching?’
‘Sir,’ I answered,
‘he was half black and half white; I
liked my half; how did you like
yours?’”
Upon the assertion that the slaveholders
cannot abolish slavery,
Agrippa
said, “No one is obliged to do wrong.
When the drunkard says he cannot
live
without spirit, I tell him to take
temperate things for a time, and see if
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35
he is not better. It is his will that is
in fault. There is no necessity to do
wrong. God never makes us do
wrong.”
He put his hand on a little boy’s
head, and said, “I love children; I
love to
see them well brought up. It
is a good thing to feed the minds of
children.”
When speaking of the abolitionists,
he said, “It will be a great while before
the abolitionists can succeed in
their purpose; but they will do great
good to the black man by inducing
them to keep down their bad feelings,
because
they know that they will have
help at last.”
“The abolitionists have the great
happiness of working for a cause in
which
they know that they will have
God on their side.”
In a cause the merit of which depends
upon the question whether the
3(6)v
36
black man is a man, no further testimony
is needed than the remarks of
Agrippa; and what greater encouragement
can the abolitionists desire than
that contained in his words, “God is
on their side?”