How does an initiated individual possibly represent the barbarism of “the great Sodom” of the American South to an uninitiated, squeamish public? One of Brown’s most distinctive strategies was to disarm his audience, as in these remarks delivered to an antislavery convention in New York City in May 1856, with a combination of humorous anecdotes and hard-hitting commentary designed to appeal to their moral sentiments.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Those of you who have been here during yesterday and to-day will bear witness that the several speakers have hesitated not to declare the truth as it regards the iniquity of slavery. It can scarcely be expected, however, that those of us who understand the workings of slavery in the Southern States will bring before you the wrongs of the slave as we could wish. Language will not allow us; and if we had the language, the fastidiousness of the people would not permit our portraying them. Slavery has justly been termed the crime of crimes. Man cannot inflict upon his fellow-man a greater crime than to enslave him, for by so doing he not only injures his fellow-man, but himself. It is not possible for one part of mankind to enslave another portion without injuring themselves. That may be seen in the workings of slavery in this country.
Every one who speaks of the condition of the slave will tell you of his ignorance and degradation. This ignorance and debasement necessarily affect the master. The master may get education and refinement, but his relation to the slave is such that he is contaminated. Those of us who have lived in slavery could tell you privately what we cannot tell you publicly of the degradation in the domestic circle of the master. We could tell you of the ignorance of the white people as well as the black. The white children are brought up with the black children; it is not possible to separate them; hence the ignorance and degradation that is found among the slave population communicates itself to them. The child grows up to the age of ten or twelve years: then the master discovers that that son or daughter must be removed to a part of the country where the rough edges that intercourse with the slave children has imparted may be rubbed off. The young man is sent off to the North to get an education; and in coming to your Northern seminaries of learning, among your own sons, he must necessarily rub off those rough edges upon them. And the same is true with regard to the slaveowner’s daughter. Thus your children partake of this degradation, vice and ignorance. This is one of the results of your toleration of such a system. A distinguished writer has justly said that no one can fasten a chain upon the limbs of his neighbour without afterwards inevitably fastening the other end upon his own neck. This is exemplified not only in the slaveholder at the South, but in the people of the North, who have folded their arms and permitted this iniquity to live.
You have, no doubt, all of you, read of the riot that occurred, some three months since, among the students of Columbia College, South Carolina, in which the students drove the police back to their stations, and at length demanded the chief of the police, that they might sacrifice him to their ferocity; and when the mayor had called out the militia, they could do nothing, and the chief of the police was murdered, with two other policemen. That was a legitimate fruit of slavery. The young white boy is brought up with these ferocious passions. He has been accustomed to kick and drive the black slave about; and when he meets with white persons, he considers them his inferiors, and his passions break forth on the slightest provocation. Northern men complain that they send men to Congress and they exhibit no backbone—that they don’t face the music in the halls of Congress. To send your Northern men to Congress, there to meet the bully, the duellist, the woman-scourger, the gambler, the murderer, is like taking your little son from the country and sending him to the city, where he finds a thousand rude boys who insult and abuse him. Men in the South who are accustomed to flog old men and young women, and to sell children from the mother’s breast, are more than a match for your Northern man when it comes to bullying and threats. To talk about a good slaveholder is a contradiction. A good slaveholder is a bad man, a Christian slaveholder an infidel, a just slaveholder a thief, for to rob a man of himself is the greatest theft that a human being can commit. The South is the great Sodom of this country. I hold in my hand an advertisement, taken from the New Orleans Picayune, by which you may see the evidence of what I assert, coming from the slaveholder himself.
“$20 REWARD—Ran away from the plantation of the undersigned the negro man SHADRACK, a preacher, five feet nine inches high, about forty years old, and stamped N. E. upon the breast and having both small toes cut off. He has a very dark complexion, with eyes small but bright, and a look quite insolent.”
The slaveowner has the audacity to say that his slave has a look quite insolent. I rather think if the Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, who has just been reelected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Tract Society, and who thinks the slaves are so happy, contented and always look so smiling, should happen to be sold down South, be stamped with the letters “N. E.,” and have his toes cut off—I rather think he would look quite as insolent as that “very dark-complexioned” man mentioned in this advertisement (laughter and applause).
I saw in a newspaper published in my town, St. Louis—for I happen to have come from among the “border ruffians” (laughter)—an editorial announcement that a man who owned a slave there, a short time since, had caused that slave to be branded upon the right cheek with the words “slave for life,” and the editor spends a great deal of invective and indignation upon this owner of the slave, saying that the slave was a good servant and had committed no offence to merit such treatment. The crime of this victim was, being born with a white skin, for the editor tells us that he had straight hair and would pass for a white man. Being white, it was easy for him to escape, and hence the necessity of branding these words on his cheek, so as to prevent his running away. Perhaps, too, he had too much Anglo-Saxon blood in him to be a submissive slave, as Theodore Parker would say.
Such are the workings of slavery. A slave must always be made to know his place; if it were not so, he could not be kept in his chains. We see the effects of slavery everywhere throughout the North. I saw an illustration of it to-day in your own city. A very nice-looking coloured lady, a stranger in this city, no doubt, who was not aware that on the Sixth Avenue they have cars expressly for coloured people, entered a car that stopped to take in some other ladies. She was rudely thrust from the platform by the conductor and told that that was not the car for her to ride in. She was considerably lighter in complexion than myself, and perhaps as white as some that were seated in the car.
Some year and a half ago, I landed in this city from a British steamer, having just left England, after having been abroad in different countries in Europe for a number of years, where I was once never reminded that I was a coloured person, so that I had quite forgotten the distinction of caste that existed in democratic America. I walked into an eating-house. I had scarcely got my hat off when the proprietor told me I could not eat there. Said I, “I have got a good appetite, and if you will give me a trial, I rather think I will convince you that I can.” “But,” said he, “it is not allowable.” I did not know what to make of it; I had been away five years, and had forgotten the great power of slavery over the North. I felt insulted. I walked into another eating-house. The proprietor asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted my dinner. “You can’t get it here; we don’t accommodate niggers.” That was twice I was insulted. I went into a third, with a like result. I then went and stood by a lamp post for some five minutes. I thought of the nineteen years I had worked as a slave; I thought of the glorious Declaration of Independence; I looked around me and saw no less than seven steeples of churches; and I resolved I would have my dinner in the city of New York (applause). I went to another restaurant. I made up my mind what I would do. I saw a vacant plate at a table; I took aim at it. I pulled back the chair, and sat down, turned over the plate, and stuck my knife in something. I was agitated, and did not know what it was, until I got it on my plate, when I found it was a big pickle (laughter). At any rate I went to work at it. The waiter stared at me. Said I, “Boy, get me something to eat.” He stared again, walked to the proprietor, and said something to him, came back and helped me. When I got through my dinner, I went up to the bar, and handed the proprietor a dollar. He took it, and then said, “You have got the greatest impudence of any nigger I have seen for a great while (laughter); and if it had n’t been that I did n’t want to disturb my people sitting at the table, I would have taken you up from that table a little the quickest.” “Well, sir,” said I, “if you had, you would have taken the table cloth, dishes and all with me. Now, sir, look at me; whenever I come into your dining saloon, the best thing you can do is to let me have what I want to eat quietly. You keep house for the accommodation of the public; I claim to be one of that public.”
Some twenty days after that, I was about to start for Boston; I had n’t time to go to that saloon, so I went to a confectionary establishment, and thought I would do with a little pastry. I walked in; a young woman, who attended, came up and said she, “Can’t accommodate you, sir.” I paid no attention to her, but picked up a knife, and pitched into a piece of pie. Said she, “We can’t accommodate you, sir.” Said I, “This is very good pastry” (laughter). Then said she, “We don’t accommodate niggers.” Said I, “Did you make this?” (Laughter.) I finished my piece of pie, and then a second piece. By and by another lady came to me, and said, “Sir, we don’t accommodate niggers.” Said I, “You give very good accommodations; I shall always patronize you.” I finished my third piece of pie, and asked for a glass of soda water. Says she, “Just leave my place, and I will charge you nothing.” Said I, “Madam, I expect to pay wherever I get accommodation, but I can’t pay for this until you give me a glass of soda water.” So I took a chair and sat down, saying I was in no hurry; for I concluded to wait and go on the next train. As soon as she saw I was determined to stay, she said, “You may have your soda water.” I drank it and walked out. Now that grated very hard on my feelings, after being away so long, and forgetting almost everything about the way coloured people were treated in this country.
Such are the workings of slavery, and yet, with all your boasted benevolence and religion, there is scarce a pulpit in New York that has a word to say against these wrongs (applause). Still, such is the compromising character of the American people that the time will probably come when colourphobia will become the subject of compromise, even with this religious sentiment. Not long since, a coloured man, of great wealth, came to visit a merchant in one of our eastern cities, who, by a business connection with this coloured man, had acquired a considerable fortune. The merchant knew he must treat him kindly, and so he invited him to his house, and on Sunday he asked him to go to his church. It was one of the fine churches where a coloured face is never seen inside, except, perhaps, to do some menial work. The pew was near the pulpit. When the merchant, with his black friend, entered the pew, the congregation stared. There was no mistake about its being a black man. The minister entered his pulpit and commenced the services. He did n’t discover the black man until he got into the midst of his sermon. It disconcerted him, and he could not go on. He lost his place in his sermon, hesitated, and at length had to slip secondly, and go to thirdly. He made a botch of it and concluded. As soon as service was over, a neighbour of the merchant came to him, and asked him what he meant by bringing a nigger into the church. “Why, it is my pew,” said the merchant. “Is that any reason why you must insult the whole congregation?” said the man. “Yes, but he is an educated man,” the merchant replied. “What of that?” said the man, “he is black.” “But, sir, he is a correspondent of mine, and is worth a million of dollars.” “Worth what!” “A million of dollars.” “I beg pardon, introduce me to him” (laughter and applause).
Ladies and gentlemen, you may think lightly of these insults and annoyances which the coloured people have to endure, but they are felt keenly by us. And if there were nothing else for the people of the North to do, they have got enough to revolutionize the public sentiment in this respect. You see nothing of this hatred abroad. A black man is treated in Europe according as he behaves, and not according to his colour. This feeling is one of the great hindrances to the abolition movement. The Colonization Society fosters this hatred and makes itself one of the great props of slavery. There are churches that refuse to open their doors for a meeting in behalf of the slave, but throw them wide open to the Colonization Society, and yet pretend that they are opposed to slavery and in favour of elevating the black man.
The American Anti-Slavery Society is the only one, of all the various societies, of whatsoever name, that meet this week in this city, that goes for the abolition of slavery. Our work is to look after humanity and try to lift it up in the person of the down-trodden slave. I feel that if those in the Southern States with whom I am identified by complexion could only know of the sentiment and feeling which animates those who take part in this great cause, they would put up their prayer to God for our success (applause).
I speak not for the purpose of making any display of eloquence or rhetoric. Whenever I come before a cultivated audience like this, I remember that I was nineteen years a slave, and never had a day’s schooling in my life, and yet that it is a duty I owe to my enslaved countrymen, to those who are bound to me by tenderest ties, to my God and to my country, to labour in the cause of humanity and remember those in bonds as bound with them. And if I can be the means of helping to remove a single obstacle out of the way of the anti-slavery cause, I shall feel well paid (applause).