beatifying words, "You are a free woman!" There her chains will drop;
she will cease to be a slave, and become a human being.
[Footnote 2: _Boston Courier_, Nov. 26, 1859.]
Must I refer to your letter once more? I hope to destroy its spell over
me. But I wish at times that I had never seen that letter. "Tell Mammy
that it is a great disappointment to me that her name is not to have a
place in my household." Your little slave-babe, Kate's child, you named
Cygnet, because Mammy's name is Cygnet, and she and your mother grew up
together, and she has been your kind, faithful servant and friend, as
much friend as servant, during all your youth till you were married. And
you seek to perpetuate her name in your own household, and to have a
little Cygnet grow up with your own little Susan. "I was always pleased
with the idea that my Susan and little Cygnet should grow up together;
but it seems best that it should not be so, or it would not be denied."
All this is very sweet and beautiful; but now let me tell you, honestly,
what the spontaneous thought of a Northerner is while meditating on such
an apparently lovely picture. Here it is: Suppose that Susan and little
Cygnet, when both are three years old, are playing in your front-yard
some morning, and a cruel slave-trader should look over the fence, and
say to your husband, "Fine little thing there, sir; take a hunderd and a
ha'f for her?" I ask, Would not your husband (perhaps in need, just
then, of money to pay a note) lay down his newspaper, invite the fellow
in to drink, and go through the opening scene of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
coaxing up the fellow's price; and finally, would he not sell little
Cygnet while her mother was out of sight, push poor little Susan into a
room alone to cry her eyes out, and you and your husband pocket the
money? Many of us at the North, dear madam, if you will take my
unworthy self as a specimen, and I am a very moderate anti-slavery man
and no fanatic, are quite as ready to believe such things of you as the
contrary. We have read "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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