Part 15 (1/2)

Some years before the events just spoken of, Townsend had been a medical student in Cincinnati. One day he stepped into the courthouse, where a fugitive-slave case was being tried. There he listened to an argument from Salmon P. Chase, the negro's defender, that made an Abolitionist of him. The senatorial incident naturally followed.

There was another Ohioan--not an individual this time, but an inst.i.tution--that will always hold a high place in the annals of Abolitionism. Oberlin College was a power in the land. It had a corps of very able professors who were, without exception, active Anti-Slavery workers. They regarded themselves as public instructors as well as private teachers. There was scarcely a towns.h.i.+p in Ohio that they did not visit, either personally or through their disciples.

They were as ready to talk in country schoolhouses as in their own college halls. Of course, they were violently opposed. Mobs broke up their meetings very frequently, but that only made them more persistent. Their teachings were viciously misrepresented. They were accused of favoring the intermarriage of the races, and parents were warned, if they sent their children to Oberlin, to look out for colored sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. For such slanders, however, the men and women of Oberlin--for both s.e.xes were admitted to faculty and cla.s.ses--seemed to care no more than they did for pro-slavery mobs.

There is another name which, although it belongs exclusively neither to the East nor to the West, to the North nor to the South, should not be omitted from a record like this. Doctor Gamaliel Bailey resided in the District of Columbia, and issued the _National Era_ from Was.h.i.+ngton city.

Although a journal of small folio measurement and issued but once a week, it was for a considerable time the most influential organ of the Abolitionists. Its circulation was large and its management very able. Of course, it took no little courage and judgment to conduct such a publication in the very center of slaveholding influence, and more than once it barely escaped destruction by mobs.

If there was nothing else to his credit there was one thing accomplished by the _Era's_ owner that ent.i.tles him to lasting remembrance. He was the introducer, if not the real producer, of _Uncle Tom's Cabin._ It first appeared in the _Era_ in serial numbers.

It is perfectly safe to say that no other newspaper in the country, of any standing, would have touched it. Without Dr. Bailey's encouragement the work would not have been written. This was admitted by Mrs. Stowe.

Up to this point the people whose names have been mentioned in these pages have, to a certain extent, been public characters and leaders.

They were generals, and colonels, and captains, and orderly sergeants, in the army of emanc.i.p.ation. There were, also, privates in the ranks whose services richly deserve to be commemorated, showing, as they do, the character of the works they performed. The writer cannot resist the temptation to refer to two of them in particular, although, doubtless, there were many others of equal merit. A reason for the preference he shows in this case, that will not be misunderstood, is the fact that one of the men was his uncle and the other his father.

James Kedzie and John Hume were plain country farmers residing in southwestern Ohio, neither very rich nor very poor. They were natives of Scotland, and stating that fact is almost equivalent to saying they were Abolitionists. None of the Scotch of the writer's personal knowledge, at the period referred to, were otherwise than strongly Anti-Slavery. There are said to be exceptions to all rules, and there was one in this instance. He was a kinsman of the author, and a ”braw”

young Scotchman who came over to this country with the expectation of picking up a fortune in short order. Finding the North too slow, he went South. There he met a lady who owned a valuable plantation well stocked with healthy negroes. He married the woman, and became something of a local nabob, with the reputation of great severity as a master. One day, with his own hand, he inflicted a cruel flogging on a slave who had the name of a ”bad n.i.g.g.e.r.” That night, when the master was playing chess with a neighbor by candlelight on the ground floor of his dwelling, all the windows being open, the negro crept up with a loaded gun and shot him dead.

The sad affair was regretfully commented on by the dead man's relatives, who, I remember, referred to his untimely ending as ”his judgment,” and as a punishment he had brought upon ”himself.”

My uncle and father did not conceal their unpopular views. They openly voted the Abolition ticket. In eight years, beginning with their two ballots, they raised the third party vote in their immediate vicinity to eight, and they boasted of the progress they had made.

They did not make public addresses, but they faithfully listened to those made by others in support of the cause. They attended all Abolition meetings that were within reach. They took the _National Era_. Not only that, but they got up clubs for it. The first club I recollect my father's securing consisted of half a dozen subscribers, for one half of which he paid. The next year's was double in size, and so was my father's contribution. There was no fund for the promotion of the Abolitionist cause, for which they were called upon, to which they did not cheerfully pay according to their means.

All Abolition lecturers and colporteurs were gratuitously entertained, although their presence was sometimes a cause of abuse, and even of danger. There were other travelers who sometimes applied for help.

Their faces were of dusky hue, and their great whitish eyes were like those of hunted beasts of the forest. They went on their way strengthened and rejoicing--always in the direction of the North Star.

The men are dead, but Slavery is dead also, partly through their labors and sacrifices. Their unpretentious, patient, earnest lives were not in vain. They contributed to the final triumph of Freedom's holy cause.

APPENDIX

EMANc.i.p.aTION PROCLAMATION

January 1, 1863.--Whereas, on the 22d day of September, 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

That on the 1st day of January, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward and forever free, and the Executive government of the United States, including the naval and military authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons or any of them in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

That the Executive will on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections, wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States have partic.i.p.ated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.