A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. HavilandHaviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith)
Religion
A Woman's Life-Work — Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland
Haviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith)
Freed persons; Haviland, Laura S. (Laura Smith), 1808-1898; Underground Railroad
"At a public meeting called the next evening after our return from the
Toledo trip, fourteen dollars was placed in my hands as a remuneration
for the assistance I rendered in examining your very sick patient. I
found the disease truly alarming, far beyond the reach of human aid,
much deeper than bilious fever, although it might have assumed a
typhoid grade. The blister that you were immediately to apply on the
back of the patient could not extract that dark, deep plague-spot of
slavery, too apparent to be misunderstood."
I received a long list of epithets in a letter, bearing date,
Jonesboro, Tennessee, February 7, 1847, from Thomas K. Chester, the
sick deacon:
"I have thought it my duty to answer your pack of balderdash, ... that
you presumed to reply to my father, as I was with him on his tour to
Michigan, and a participant in all his transactions, even to the acting
the sick man's part in Toledo ..., True it is, by your cunning
villainies you have deprived us of our just rights, of our own
property.... Thanks be to an all wise and provident God that, my father
has more of that sable kind of busy fellows, greasy, slick, and fat;
and they are not cheated to death out of their hard earnings by
villainous and infernal abolitionists, whose philanthropy is interest,
and whose only desire is to swindle the slave-holder out of his own
property, and convert its labor to their own infernal aggrandizement.
"It is exceedingly unpleasant for me to indulge in abuse, particularly
to a _woman_, and I would not now do it, did I not feel a perfect
consciousness of right and duty.... Who do you think would parley with
a thief, a robber of man's just rights, recognized by the glorious
Constitution of our Union! Such a condescension would damn an honest
man, would put modesty to the blush. What! to engage in a contest with
you? a rogue, a damnable thief, a negro thief, an outbreaker, a
criminal in the sight of all honest men; ... the mother, too, of a
pusillanimous son, who permitted me to curse and damn you in Sylvania!
I would rather be caught with another man's sheep on my back than to
engage in such a subject, and with such an individual as old Laura
Haviland, a damned nigger-stealer....
"You can tell Elsie that since our return my father bought her eldest
daughter; that she is now his property, and the mother of a likely boy,
that I call Daniel Haviland after your pretty son. She has plenty to
eat, and has shoes in the Winter, an article Willis's children had not
when I was there, although it was cold enough to freeze the horns off
the cows.... What do you think your portion will be at the great day of
judgment? I think it will be the inner temple of hell."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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