Читать книгу Shadow and Light - Gibbs Mifflin Wistar - Страница 5

An event that came under my notice of startling character, attracting national attention, was the arrival of the schooner "Amistad" at Philadelphia in 1840. This vessel had been engaged in the slave trade. With a cargo of slaves from Africa was destined for one of the West India Islands. Cinguez, one of, and at the head of the captives, rebelled while at sea, killing a number of the crew and taking possession of the ship.

In the concluding scene of the foregoing drama, Mr. Douglass was an actor, I an observer. After the decision giving them their liberty, the anti-slavery society, who had been vigilant in its endeavors to have them liberated ever since their advent on American shores, held a monster meeting to receive them.

Frederick Douglass introduced "Cinguez" to the meeting. I cannot forget or fail to feel the inspiration of that scene. The two giants locked in each others embrace, looked the incarnation of heroism and dauntless purpose, equal to the achievement of great results. The one by indomitable will had shaken off his own shackles and was making slavery odius by his matchless and eloquent arraignment; the other, "a leader of men," had now written his protest with the blood of his captors. Cinguez, with unintelligible utterance in African dialect with emphatic gesture, his liberty loving soul on fire, while burning words strove for expression, described his action on the memorable night of his emancipation, with such vividness, power, and pathos that the audience seemed to see every act of the drama and feel the pulsation of his great heart. Through an interpreter he afterwards narrated his manner of taking the vessel, and how it happened to reach American shores. How, after taking the ship, he stood by the tiller with drawn weapon and commanded the mate to steer back to Africa. During the day he complied, but at night took the opposite course. After sometime of circuitous wandering the vessel ran into Long Island Sound and was taken possession of by the United States authorities. Cinguez, as hero and patriot, ennobled African character.

When majority and the threshold of man's estate is attained, the transition from advanced youth to the entry of manhood is liable to casualties; not unlike a bark serenely leaving its home harbor to enter unfrequented waters, the crew exhilarated by fresh and invigorating breezes, charmed by a genial sky, it moves on "like a thing of beauty" with the hope of "joy forever." The chart and log of many predecessors may unheeded lie at hand, but the glorious present, cloudless and fascinating, rich in expectation, it sails on, fortunate if it escapes the rocks and shoals that ever lie in wait. It is unreasonable to expect a proper conception, and the happiest performance of life's duties at such a period, especially from those with easy and favorable environments, or who have been heedless of parental restraint, for even at an advanced stage in life, there have been many to exclaim with a poet:

Twenty-one years of age found me the possessor of a trade, an attainment, and a capital invaluable for a poor young man beginning the race of life. For whether seen smutted by the soot of the blacksmith shop, or whitened by the lime of the plasterer or bricklayer; whether bending beneath tool box of the carpenter or ensconced on the bench of the shoemaker, he has a moral strength, a consciousness of acquirement, giving him a dignity of manhood unpossessed by the menial and those engaged in unskilled labor. Let it never be forgotten that as high over in importance as the best interest of the race is to that of the individual, will be the uplifting influence of assiduously cultivating a desire to obtain trades. The crying want with us is a middle class. The chief component of our race today is laborers unskilled. We will not and cannot compete with other races who have a large and influential class of artisans and mechanics, and having received higher remuneration for labor, have paved the way for themselves or offsprings from the mechanic to the merchant or to the professional. These three factors, linked and interlinked, an ascending chain will be strong in its relation, as consistent in construction.

In 1849 Frederick Douglass, Charles Lenox Remond and Julia Griffith, an English lady prominent in reform circles in England, attended the National Anti-slavery Convention held in Philadelphia, and presided over by that apostle of liberty, Wm. Lloyd Garrison. At its close Mr. Douglass invited me to accompany him to his home at Rochester, and then to join him in lecturing in the "Western Reserve."

Without salary, poor in purse, doubtful of useful ability, dependent for sustenance on a sentiment then prevailing, that for anti-slavery expression was as reserved as the "Reserve" was Western. I have often thought of my feelings of doubt and fear to go with Mr. Douglass, as an epoch in my life's history. The parting of the ways, the embarkation to a wider field of action, the close connection between obedience to an impulse of duty (however uninviting or uncertain the outcome), and the ever moral and often material benefit.

Rochester proved to be my pathway to California. Western New York, 50 years ago, then known as the "Western Reserve," was very unlike the present as to population, means of travel, material developments, schools of learning, and humanizing influences. Mr. Douglass, in the Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark., a short time before his death, told how, in 1849, we there traveled together; that where now are stately cities and villages a sparsely settled wilderness existed; that while we there proclaimed abolition as the right of the slave, the chilling effect of those December days were not more cold and heartless than the reception we met when our mission as advocates for the slave became known; churches and halls were closed against us. Stables and blacksmith shops would sometimes hold audiences more generous with epithets and elderly eggs than with manly decorum. God be thanked, Douglass, the grandest of "our grand old men," lived to see "the seeds of mighty truth have their silent undergrowth, and in the earth be wrought." A family, however poor, striving as best they may to give the rudiments of knowledge to their children, should have, if but few, books descriptive of the hopes and struggles of those no better situated, who have made impress on the age in which they lived. We seldom remember from whence we first received the idea which gave impulse to an honorable action; we received it, however, most probably from tongue or pen. For impressible youth such biography should be as easy of access as possible.

It has been said that "a man's noblest mistake is to be born before his time." This will not apply to Frederick Douglass. His "Life and Times" should be in the front rank of selection for blessing and inspiration. A blessing for the high moral of its teaching; an inspiration for the poorest boy; that he need not "beg the world's pardon for having been born," but by fostering courage and consecration of purpose "he may rank the peer of any man."

Frederick Douglass, born a slave, hampered by all the depressing influences of that institution; by indomitable energy and devotion; seizing with an avidity that knew no obstacle every opportunity, cultivated a mind and developed a character that will be a bright page in the history of noble and beneficent achievements.

For the conditions that confronted him and the anti-slavery crusade, have been well and eloquently portrayed by the late George William Curtis. That how terribly earnest was the anti-slavery agitation this generation little knows. To understand is to recall the situation of the country. Slavery sat supreme in the White House and made laws at the capitol. Courts of Justice were its ministers, and legislators its lackeys. It silenced the preacher in the pulpit; it muzzled the editor at his desk, and the professor in his lecture-room. It sat a price on the heads of peaceful citizens; robbed the mails, and denounced the vital principles of the declaration of independence as treason. In the States where the law did not tolerate slavery, slavery ruled the club and drawing room, the factory and the office, swaggered at the dinner table, and scourged with scorn a cowardly society. It tore the golden rule from the school books, and from the prayer books the pictured benignity of Christ. It prohibited schools in the free States for the hated race; hunted women who taught children to read, and forbade a free people to communicate with their representatives.

It was under such conditions so pungently and truthfully stated that Douglass appeared as a small star on the horizon of a clouded firmament; rose in intellectual brilliancy, mental power and a noble generosity. For his devotion was not only to the freedom of the slave with which he was identified, but for liberty and the betterment of humanity everywhere, regardless of sex or color. His page already luminous in history will continue to brighten, and when statuary, now and hereafter, erected to his memory, shall have crumbled "neath the beatings of time;" the good fame of his name, high purpose and unflinching integrity to the highest needs of humanity, will remain hallowed "foot prints in the sands of time." Eminently fit was the naming of an institution in Philadelphia "The Frederick Douglass Hospital and Freedman's School;" the assuaging of suffering and the giving of larger opportunity for technical instruction were cherished ideals with the sage of Anacostia; also the lives of Harriet Beacher Stowe, Lucretia Mott and Francis E. Harper, and the noble band of women of which they were the type, who bravely met social ostracism and insult for devotion to the slave, will ever have a proud place in our country's history. Of this illustrious band was Julia Griffith, hitherto referred to, a grand representative of those renowned women, who at home or abroad, did so much to hasten the downfall of slavery and encourage the weak and lowly to hope and effort. Thackery has said that, "Could you see every man's career, you would find a woman clogging him, or cheering him, or beckoning him on."

Having finished my intended tour with Mr. Douglass, and returned to Rochester, the outlook for my future, to me, was not promising. The opportunities for advancement were much, very much less than now. With me ambition and dejection contended for the mastery, the latter often in the ascendant. To her friendly inquiry I gave reasons for my depression. I shall never forget the response; almost imperious in manner, you could already anticipate the magnitude of an idea that seemed to struggle for utterance. "What! discouraged? Go do some great thing." It was an inspiration, the result of which she may never have known. We are assured, however, that a kind act or helpful word is inseparably connected with a blessing for the giver. To earnest youth I would bequeath the excelsior of the "youth mid snow and ice," and the above injunction, "upward and onward;" "go do some great thing."

The war with Mexico, discovery of gold in California in 1848, the acquisition of new territory, and the developments of our hitherto undeveloped Western possessions, stimulated the financial pulse, and permeated every avenue of industry and speculative life. While in New York State I met several going and returning gold seekers, many giving dazzling accounts of immense deposits of gold in the new Eldorado; and others, as ever the case with adventurers, gave gloomy statements of peril and disaster. A judicious temperament, untiring energy, a lexicon of endeavor, in which there is no such word as "fail," is the only open sesame to hidden opportunities in a new country. Fortune, in precarious mood, may sometime smile on the inert, but she seldom fails to surrender to pluck, tenacity and perseverance. As the Oxford men say it is the one pull more of the oar that proves the "beefiness of the fellow;" it is the one march more that wins the campaign; the five minutes more persistent courage that wins the fight.

I returned to Philadelphia, and with some friendly assistance, sailed, in 1850, from New York, as a steerage passenger for San Francisco. Arriving at Aspinwall, the point of debarkation, on the Atlantic side, boats and boatsmen were engaged to transport passengers and baggage up the "Chagress," a small and shallow river. Crossing the Isthmus to Panama, on the Pacific side, I found Panama very cosmopolitan in appearance, for mingled with the sombrero-attired South American, could be seen denizens from every foreign clime. Its make up was a combination of peculiar attributes. It was dirty, but happy in having crows for its scavengers; sickly, but cheery; old, but with an youthful infusion. The virtues and vices were both shy and unblushing. A rich, dark foliage, ever blooming, and ever decaying; a humid atmosphere; a rotting vegetation under a tropical sun, while fever stalked on from conquest to conquest.

The sudden influx, the great travel from ocean to ocean, had given much impetus to business as well as to local amusements. For the latter, Sunday was the ideal day, when bull and cock fights secured the attendance of the elite, and the humble, the priest and the laity.

The church, preaching gentleness and peace in the morning, in the afternoon her minister, with sword spurred "bolosed" bantams under their arms, would appear on the scene eager for the fray.

After recovering from the Panama fever I took passage on the steamship "Golden Gate" for San Francisco. Science, experience, and a greatly increased demand have done much during the intervening fifty years to lessen risk and increase the comfort of ocean travel. Yet it is not without a degree of restless anticipation that one finds himself and baggage finally domiciled on an ocean-going steamer. Curiosity and criticism, selfishness and graciousness each in turn assert themselves. Curiosity in espionage, criticism in observation, while selfishness and graciousness alternate. You find yourself in the midst of a miniature world, environed, but isolated from activities of the greater, an epitome of human proclivities. A possible peril, real, imaginary or remote; a common brotherhood tightens the chain of fellowship and gradually widens the exchange of amenities.

We had a stormy passage, making San Diego with the top of smoke stack encrusted with the salt of the waves, paddle wheel broken and otherwise disabled, finally arriving at San Francisco in September.