The Abolitionists: Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights, 1830-1864 — David Hume — John Shaqi
The Abolitionists: Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights, 1830-1864
David Hume · en
As Lundy spent the greater part of his time in traveling from place to
place, procuring subscriptions to his journal and lecturing on
slavery, he could not issue his paper regularly at any one point. In
some instances he carried the head-rules, column-rules, and
subscription-book of his journal with him, and when he came to a town
where he found a printing-press he would stop long enough to print and
mail a number of his periodical. He traveled for the most part on
foot, carrying a heavy pack. In ten years in that way he covered
twenty-five thousand miles, five thousand on foot.
He decided to invade the enemy's country by going where slavery was.
He went to Tennessee, making the journey of eight hundred miles, one
half by water, and one half on foot. That was, of course, before the
day of railroads.
He continued to issue his paper, although often threatened with
personal violence. Once two bullies locked him in a room and, with
revolvers in hand, tried to frighten him into a promise to discontinue
his work. He did not frighten to any extent.
Seeking what seemed to be the most inviting field for his operations,
he decided to move his establishment to Baltimore, going most of the
way on foot and lecturing as he went whenever he could find an
audience.
His residence in Baltimore came near proving fatal. A slave-trader,
whom he had offended, attacked and brutally beat him on the street.
The consolation he got from the court that tried the ruffian, who was
"honorably discharged," was that he (Lundy) had got "nothing more than
he deserved." Soon afterwards his printing material and other property
was burned by a mob.
He went to Mexico to select a location for a projected colony of
colored people. He traveled almost altogether afoot, observing the
strictest economy and supporting himself by occasional jobs of
saddlery and harness mending. In his journal he tells us that he often
slept in the open air, the country traversed being mostly new and
unsettled. He was in constant danger from panthers, alligators, and
rattlesnakes, while he was cruelly beset by gnats and mosquitoes. His
clothes in the morning, he tells us, would be as wet from heavy dews
as if he had fallen into the river.
Intellectually, Lundy was not a great man, but his heart was beyond
measurement. The torch that he carried in the midst of the all but
universal darkness of that period emitted but a feeble ray, but he
kept it burning, and it possessed the almost invaluable property of
being able to transmit its flame to other torches. It kindled the
brand that was wielded by William Lloyd Garrison, and which possessed
a wonderful power of illumination.