The Underground Railroad Part 143

While in Toronto she lectured, and was listened to with great interest; but she made only a brief visit, thence returning to Philadelphia, her adopted home.

With her newly acquired reputation as a lecturer, from 1856 to 1859 she continued her labors in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, &c. In the meantime she often came in contact with Underground Rail Road pa.s.sengers, especially in Philadelphia. None sympathized with them more sincerely or showed a greater willingness to render them material aid.

She contributed apparently with the same liberality as though they were her own near kin. Even when at a distance, so deep was her interest in the success of the Road, she frequently made it her business to forward donations, and carefully inquire into the state of the treasury. The Chairman of the Committee might publish a volume of interesting letters from her pen relating to the Underground Rail Road and kindred topics; but a few extracts must suffice. We here copy from a letter dated at Rushsylvania, Ohio, Dec. 15th: "I send you to-day two dollars for the Underground Rail Road. It is only a part of what I subscribed at your meeting. May G.o.d speed the flight of the slave as he speeds through our Republic to gain his liberty in a monarchical land. I am still in the lecturing field, though not very strong physically.... Send me word what I can do for the fugitive."

From Tiffin, Ohio, March 31st, touching the news of a rescue in Philadelphia, she thus wrote:

"I see by the Cincinnati papers that you have had an attempted rescue and a failure. That is sad! Can you not give me the particulars? and if there is anything that I can do for them in money or words, call upon me. This is a common cause; and if there is any burden to be borne in the Anti-Slavery-cause--anything to be done to weaken our hateful chains or a.s.sert our manhood and womanhood, I have a right to do my share of the work. The humblest and feeblest of us can do something; and though I may be deficient in many of the conventionalisms of city life, and be considered as a person of good impulses, but unfinished, yet if there is common rough work to be done, call on me."

Mrs. Harper was not content to make speeches and receive plaudits, but was ever willing to do the rough work and to give material aid wherever needed.

From another letter dated Lewis Centre, Ohio, we copy the following characteristic extract:

"Yesterday I sent you thirty dollars. Take five of it for the rescuers (who were in prison), and the rest pay away on the books. My offering is not large; but if you need more, send me word. Also how comes on the Underground Rail Road? Do you need anything for that? You have probably heard of the shameful outrage of a colored man or boy named Wagner, who was kidnapped in Ohio and carried across the river and sold for a slave....

Ohio has become a kind of a negro hunting ground, a new Congo's coast and Guinea's sh.o.r.e. A man was kidnapped almost under the shadow of our capital. Oh, was it not dreadful?... Oh, may the living G.o.d prepare me for an earnest and faithful advocacy of the cause of justice and right!"

In those days the blows struck by the hero, John Brown, were agitating the nation. Scarcely was it possible for a living soul to be more deeply affected than this female advocate. Nor did her sympathies end in mere words. She tendered material aid as well as heartfelt commiseration.

To John Brown's wife[A] she sent through the writer the following letter:

[Footnote A: Mrs. Harper pa.s.sed two weeks with Mrs. Brown at the house of the writer while she was awaiting the execution of her husband, and sympathized with her most deeply.]

LETTER TO JOHN BROWN'S WIFE.

FARMER CENTRE, OHIO, Nov. 14th.

MY DEAR MADAM:--In an hour like this the common words of sympathy may seem like idle words, and yet I want to say something to you, the n.o.ble wife of the hero of the nineteenth century. Belonging to the race your dear husband reached forth his hand to a.s.sist, I need not tell you that my sympathies are with you. I thank you for the brave words you have spoken. A republic that produces such a wife and mother may hope for better days. Our heart may grow more hopeful for humanity when it sees the sublime sacrifice it is about to receive from his hands. Not in vain has your dear husband periled all, if the martyrdom of one hero is worth more than the life of a million cowards. From the prison comes forth a shout of triumph over that power whose ethics are robbery of the feeble and oppression of the weak, the trophies of whose chivalry are a plundered cradle and a scourged and bleeding woman. Dear sister, I thank you for the brave and n.o.ble words that you have spoken. Enclosed I send you a few dollars as a token of my grat.i.tude, reverence and love.

Yours respectfully,

FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS.

Post Office address: care of William Still, 107 Fifth St., Philadelphia, Penn.

May G.o.d, our own G.o.d, sustain you in the hour of trial. If there is one thing on earth I can do for you or yours, let me be apprized. I am at your service.

Not forgetting Brown's comrades, who were then lying in prison under sentence of death, true to the best impulses of her generous heart, she thus wrote relative to these ill-fated prisoners, from Montpelier, Dec.

12th:

"I thank you for complying with my request. (She had previously ordered a box of things to be forwarded to them.) And also that you wrote to them. You see Brown towered up so bravely that these doomed and fated men may have been almost overlooked, and just think that I am able to send one ray through the night around them. And as their letters came too late to answer in time, I am better satisfied that you wrote. I hope the things will reach them. Poor doomed and fated men! Why did you not send them more things? Please send me the bill of expense.... Send me word what I can do for the fugitives. Do you need any money? Do I not owe you on the old bill (pledge)? Look carefully and see if I have paid all. Along with this letter I send you one for Mr. Stephens (one of Brown's men), and would ask you to send him a box of nice things every week till he dies or is acquitted. I understand the b.a.l.l.s have not been extracted from him. Has not this suffering been overshadowed by the glory that gathered around the brave old man?... Spare no expense to make the last hours of his (Stephens') life as bright as possible with sympathy.... Now, my friend, fulfil this to the letter. Oh, is it not a privilege, if you are sisterless and lonely, to be a sister to the human race, and to place your heart where it may throb close to down-trodden humanity?"

On another occasion in writing from the lecturing field hundreds of miles away from Philadelphia, the sympathy she felt for the fugitives found expression in the following language:

"How fared the girl who came robed in male attire? Do write me every time you write how many come to your house; and, my dear friend, if you have that much in hand of mine from my books, will you please pay the Vigilance Committee two or three dollars for me to help carry on the glorious enterprise. Now, please do not write back that you are not going to do any such thing. Let me explain a few matters to you. In the first place, I am able to give something. In the second place, I am willing to do so.... Oh, life is fading away, and we have but an hour of time!

Should we not, therefore, endeavor to let its history gladden the earth? The nearer we ally ourselves to the wants and woes of humanity in the spirit of Christ, the closer we get to the great heart of G.o.d; the nearer we stand by the beating of the pulse of universal love."

Doubtless it has not often been found necessary for persons desirous of contributing to benevolent causes to first have to remove antic.i.p.ated objections. Nevertheless in some cases it would seem necessary to admonish her not to be quite so liberal; to husband with a little more care her hard-earned income for a "rainy day," as her health was not strong.

"My health," she wrote at that time, "is not very strong, and I may have to give up before long. I may have to yield on account of my voice, which I think, has become somewhat affected. I might be so glad if it was only so that I could go home among my own kindred and people, but slavery comes up like a dark shadow between me and the home of my childhood. Well, perhaps it is my lot to die from home and be buried among strangers; and yet I do not regret that I have espoused this cause; perhaps I have been of some service to the cause of human rights, and I hope the consciousness that I have not lived in vain, will be a halo of peace around my dying bed; a heavenly suns.h.i.+ne lighting up the dark valley and shadow of death."

Notwithstanding this yearning for home, she was far from desiring at her death, a burial in a Slave State, as the following clearly expressed views show:

"I have lived in the midst of oppression and wrong, and I am saddened by every captured fugitive in the North; a blow has been struck at my freedom, in every hunted and down-trodden slave in the South; North and South have both been guilty, and they that sin must suffer."

Also, in harmony with the above sentiments, came a number of verses appropriate to her desires in this respect, one of which we here give as a sample:

"Make me a grave where'er you will, In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill, Make it among earth's humblest graves, But not in a land where men are slaves."

In the State of Maine the papers brought to her notice the capture of Margaret Garner, and the tragic and b.l.o.o.d.y deed connected therewith. And she writes:

"Rome had her altars where the trembling criminal, and the worn and weary slave might fly for an asylum--Judea her cities of refuge; but Ohio, with her Bibles and churches, her baptisms and prayers, had not one temple so dedicated to human rights, one altar so consecrated to human liberty, that trampled upon and down-trodden innocence knew that it could find protection for a night, or shelter for a day."

In the fall of 1860, in the city of Cincinnati, Mrs. Harper was married to Fenton Harper, a widower, and resident of Ohio. It seemed obvious that this change would necessarily take her from the sphere of her former usefulness. The means she had saved from the sale of her books and from her lectures, she invested in a small farm near Columbus, and in a short time after her marriage she entered upon house-keeping.

Notwithstanding her family cares, consequent upon married life, she only ceased from her literary and anti-slavery labors, when compelled to do so by other duties.

On the 23d of May, 1864, death deprived her of her husband.

Whilst she could not give so much attention to writing as she could have desired in her household days, she, nevertheless, did then produce some of her best productions. Take the following for a sample, on the return from Cleveland, Ohio, of a poor, ill-fated slave-girl, (under the Fugitive Slave Law):

TO THE UNION SAVERS OF CLEVELAND.

Men of Cleveland, had a vulture Sought a timid dove for prey, Would you not, with human pity, Drive the gory bird away?

Had you seen a feeble lambkin, Shrinking from a wolf so bold, Would ye not to s.h.i.+eld the trembler, In your arms have made its fold?

But when she, a hunted sister, Stretched her hands that ye might save, Colder far than Zembla's regions Was the answer that ye gave.