The Family Circle—No. 8
Serialized in twelve numbered installments in the “Juvenile Department” of The Liberator, this children’s story is framed as a running conversation about slavery among the members of a family consisting of mother, father, and several children. Their dialogue in this, the eighth installment, gently teases out lessons about northern complicity in the slave system and the insidiousness of racial discrimination.
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‘It can never be right to inquire into the expediency of doing a great and acknowledged wrong.’—Mr Hayne of S C.
‘He who upholds oppression, shares the crime.’
‘I should think father,’ said Lucy, ‘that all the slaves who could get a chance would run away quite out of the slave states, and come here where people think it is wicked to keep slaves.’
‘It is very natural you should suppose so, my dear,’ said her father, ‘and it is very mortifying to me as a republican, and painful as a friend of justice and humanity, to say that the poor slave even if he makes out to escape from the tyranny of his master, cannot find liberty among us. No longer ago than last summer, a poor man and woman made their escape from New-Orleans and concealed themselves aboard a vessel coming to Boston, but when they got here, they were put into a cellar, as I heard the account, and confined till the vessel returned, when they were sent back again. The poor woman was so much terrified at the thoughts of being carried back, that she tried to throw herself overboard.’
‘Poor people!’ said Lucy, ‘what a disappointment, and how cruel to send them back again.’
‘How abominable,’ said George, ‘after the poor creatures had once got away from their tyrants, for anybody here to be willing to assist in sending them back to slavery again.’
‘Were not the people who sent them back punished for it?’ said Helen.
‘Not that I ever heard of,’ said her father. ‘You know I told you that the slaveholders were allowed to send into any of the free states, and take up runaway slaves, and our people are allowed to assist them.’
‘But why do the free states allow this?’ said Lucy. ‘As they think it is wicked to keep people in slavery, I should think there would be some law to punish any of their own people that had anything to do with it.’
‘I will try and explain this to you,’ said her father. ‘You know, children, that though each of the states has a government of its own, yet that for some purposes they are all united as one nation under what is called the Federal Government.’
‘Yes sir,’ said Lucy, ‘I believe I understand.’
‘Well, my dear, at the time the Federal Government was formed, the free states entered into an agreement to allow the slaveholders to send into any of the free states and take up any slaves who might make their escape into them.’
‘Why, then, father,’ said George, ‘I do not see but the free states help to keep the poor blacks in slavery, for if they had not made this agreement they would have been free as soon as they had got out of the slave states.’
‘Oh why,’ said his mother, ‘is not our country as free as England.’
‘I know mother,’ said George, ‘what you are thinking of—Cowper’s lines which followed what Lucy learned some time ago,
“Slaves cannot breathe in England, if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.”
‘I think,’ said his mother, ‘when there is not a city of refuge in our whole country to which the wretched fugitive can escape from the most cruel oppression that ever afflicted humanity, it is too monstrous an absurdity to boast of this as a land of freedom.’
‘There is not then one spot in the whole United States,’ said George, ‘where the poor slave is not a prisoner, let him go where he will, he is still a slave, till he can escape from this land of freedom.’
‘Oh! father,’ said Lucy, ‘why did the free states enter into such a wicked agreement? It was wicked, father, was it not?’
‘My dear,’ said her father, ‘there were advantages, both to the free and slave states, in being united which made both sides think it best to give up some things which they did not quite like to; and people who ought to know better than little girls, and certainly as well as your father, think, that upon the whole, the free states made the best bargain they could.’
‘But,’ said George, ‘they had no right to make a bargain to injure other people, if they were to gain ever so much advantage from it.’
‘Ah! father,’ said Lucy, ‘the poor slaves cannot think it was the best bargain for them, and I do not think it was right not to take more care for their liberty, just at the very time too, when they were thinking so much of their own.’
‘No, my dear,’ said her mother, ‘neither does your father think it was right;’ and then turning to her husband, she added, ‘you recollect Miss Edgeworth says “children are excellent casuists.”’
‘What is a casuist, mother? and what did Miss Edgeworth mean?’ said Lucy.
‘A casuist, my dear,’ said her mother, ‘is one who reasons upon the right and wrong of actions, and Miss Edgeworth thought that where children can understand all the circumstances, they can judge of right and wrong as well as grown people; and they sometimes judge more correctly, because they are not so likely to puzzle themselves by thinking of other things connected with the subject, but which have nothing to do with the plain right or wrong of the case.’
‘In the present instance,’ said their father, ‘you decided, I think, very correctly, that it was not right to enter into such an agreement as the free states did, and I wish every child in the country could have the case fairly presented to him that he might be able to decide impartially, before he had learned to take it for granted as too many grown people do, that whatever is sanctioned by law must be right and proper. I willingly tell you I think it was very unjustifiable for the free states to enter into an agreement which deprived them of the power of affording shelter to any of their afflicted fellow creatures, and involved them in the guilt of slaveholding.’
‘I believe,’ said their mother, ‘that there are many people who do not know that such an agreement was ever made, and cannot understand how it is, that this part of the country has anything to do with slaveholding.’
‘I have no doubt it is so,’ said their father, ‘because cases of slaves escaping to this part of the country so seldom occur, that the subject is not often brought before us; and yet it is a fact, that however desirous any one might be to protect one of these poor creatures, there is not a house in the country but may be entered, and the owner compelled to give up to slavery a man whom he believes to have as good a right to freedom as himself.’
‘Father,’ said George, ‘if you could help any of the slaves to escape would not you do it? I would.’
‘And so would I,’ said Lucy.
‘And so would I,’ said little Helen; ‘say father, would not you?’
‘I think,’ said their father, ‘I should be very apt to do all I could, and should think I was very wicked to aid in any way in restoring them to their masters.’
The children clapped their hands and said ‘Then we were all right.’
‘Yes, my dear children, you were right, and whatever may be the law of the land, I think no just and humane man, unless he is strangely deluded, will have any concern in helping to force a fellow creature into bondage. I am glad, my dear children, you feel so much interest for the poor slaves.’
‘Oh,’ said George, ‘I never meet a black man now, but I think of the slaves, and how badly he must feel when he thinks of so many of his own people so wickedly held in slavery, and it makes me feel as if I wanted to do something kind to every black person I see.’
‘I think,’ said his mother, ‘everybody ought to try and do all in their power for people who are so much to be pitied, instead of feeling the foolish dislike to them which some weak people do.’
‘Do you mean, mother,’ said Lucy, ‘that anybody would dislike a person, without knowing whether he was a good or bad man, or anything about him except that he was black? I never heard anything so silly.’
‘Why that,’ said little Helen, ‘is as silly as Rosamond’s disliking good Mrs Egerton, because she had an ugly bonnet.’
Helen had just been reading this part of Miss Edgeworth’s Rosamond.
‘I think,’ said George, ‘it is wicked, and that is worse than silly. I am sure there is more reason to dislike white people, for they always seem to have treated the blacks worse than I ever heard that the black people treated them.’
‘True, indeed,’ said his father, ‘and it is quite time that the whites should endeavor to make up for past injustice by treating the colored people we have among us in a more christian-like manner.’
‘Oh, father,’ said the children, ‘I wish there was anything we could do for any of these poor people.’
‘Continue to feel thus, dear children,’ said their father; ‘be always ready and inclined to do them good, and I doubt not the time will come, when you will have opportunity.’
U.I.E.
(1831)