Antislavery movements -- United States; Swisshelm, Jane Grey Cannon, 1815-1884; Women's rights -- United States
Where there is the will there is a way, and it was but a few months
after that conversation when Dr. Bailey forwarded one hundred dollars to
Mrs. Stowe as a retaining fee for her services in the cause of the
slave, and lo! the result, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." As it progressed he sent
her another, and then another hundred dollars. Was ever money so well
expended?
That grand old lion, Joshua R. Giddings, had also passed through the
mob, and as I went with him to be presented to President Taylor, a woman
in the crowd stepped back, drew away her skirts, and with a snarl
exclaimed,
"A pair of abolitionists!"
The whole air of Freedom's capital thrilled and palpitated with hatred
of her and her cause. On the question of the pending Fugitive Slave
Bill, the feeling was intense and bitterly partisan, although not a
party measure. Mr. Taylor, the Whig President, had pronounced the bill
an insult to the North, and stated his determination to veto it.
Fillmore, the Vice-President, was in favor of it. So, Freedom looked to
a man owning three hundred slaves, while slavery relied on "a Northern
man with Southern principles." President Taylor was hated by the South,
was denounced as a traitor to his section, while Southern men and women
fawned upon and flattered Fillmore. Webster, the great Whig statesman of
the North, had bowed the knee to Baal, while Col. Benton, of Missouri,
was on the side of Freedom.
The third, or anti-slavery party, represented by Chase and Hale in the
Senate, was beginning to make itself felt, and must be crushed and
stamped out at all hazards--the infant must be strangled in its cradle.
While abolition was scoffed at by hypocritical priests as opening a door
to amalgamation, here, in the nation's capital, lived some of our most
prominent statesmen in open concubinage with negresses, adding to their
income by the sale of their own children, while one could neither go out
nor stay in without meeting indisputable testimony of the truth of
Thomas Jefferson's statement: "The best blood of Virginia runs in the
veins of her slaves." But the case which interested me most was a family
of eight mulattoes, bearing the image and superscription of the great
New England statesman, who paid the rent and grocery bills of their
mother as regularly as he did those of his wife.
Pigs were the scavengers, mud and garbage the rule, while men literally
wallowed in the mire of licentiousness and strong drink. In Congress
they sat and loafed with the soles of their boots turned up for the
inspection of the ladies in the galleries. Their language and gestures
as they expectorated hither and thither were often as coarse as their
positions, while they ranted about the "laws and Constitution," and
cracked their slave-whips over the heads of the dough-faces sent from
the Northern States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account