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XXVII. NEW DESTINATION FOR THE CHILDREN. MRS. FLINT
proclaimed her intention of informing Mrs. Sands who was the father of my
children. She likewise proposed to tell her what an artful devil I was; that I
had made a great deal of trouble in her family; that when Mr. Sands was at the
north, she didn't doubt I had followed him in disguise, and persuaded William
to run away. She had some reason to entertain such an idea; for I had written
from the north, from time to time, and I dated my letters from various places.
Many of them fell into Dr. Flint's hands, as I expected they would; and he must
have come to the conclusion that I travelled about a good deal. He kept a close
watch over my children, thinking they would eventually lead to my detection. A new and
unexpected trial was in store for me. One day, when Mr. Sands and his wife were
walking in the street, they met Benny. The lady took a fancy to him and
exclaimed, "What a pretty little negro! Whom does he belong to? Benny did not
hear the answer; but he came home very indignant with the stranger lady,
because she had called him a negro. A few days afterwards, Mr. Sands called on
my grandmother, and told her he wanted her to take the children to his house.
He said he had informed his wife of his relation to them, and told her they
were motherless; and she wanted to see them. When he had
gone, my grandmother came and asked what I would do. The question seemed a
mockery. What could I do? They were Mr. Sands's slaves, and their mother
was a slave, whom he had represented to be dead. Perhaps he thought I was. I
was too much pained and puzzled to come to any decision; and the children were
carried without my knowledge. Mrs. Sands had a
sister from Illinois staying with her. This lady, who had no children of her
own, was so much pleased with Ellen, that she offered to adopt her, and bring
her up as she would a daughter. Mrs. Sands wanted to take Benjamin. When
grandmother reported this to me, I was tried almost beyond endurance. Was this
all I was to gain by what I had suffered for the sake of having my children
free? True, the prospect seemed fair; but I knew too well how lightly
slaveholders held such "parental relations." If pecuniary troubles
should come, or if the new wife required more money than could conveniently be
spared, my children might be thought of as a convenient means of raising funds.
I had no trust in thee, O Slavery! Never should I know peace till my children
were emancipated with all due formalities of law. I was too proud
to ask Mr. Sands to do any thing for my own benefit; but I could bring myself
to become a supplicant for my children. I resolved to remind him of the promise
he had made me, and to throw myself upon his honor for the performance of it. I
persuaded my grandmother to go to him, and tell him I was not dead, and that I
earnestly entreated him to keep the promise he had made me; that I had heard of
the recent proposals concerning my children, and did not feel easy to accept
them; that he had promised to emancipate them, and it was time for him to
redeem his pledge. I know there was some risk in thus betraying that I was in
the vicinity; but what will not a mother do for her children? He received the
message with surprise, and said, "The children are free. I have never
intended to claim them as slaves. Linda may decide their fate. In my opinion,
they had better be sent to the north. I don't think they are quite safe here.
Dr. Flint boasts that they are still in his power. He says they were his daughter's
property, and as she was not of age when they were sold, the contract is not
legally binding." So, then, after
all I had endured for their sakes, my poor children were between two fires;
between my old master and their new master! And I was powerless. There was no
protecting arm of the law for me to invoke. Mr. Sands proposed that Ellen
should go, for the present, to some of his relatives, who had removed to
Brooklyn, Long Island. It was promised that she should be well taken care of,
and sent to school. I consented to it, as the best arrangement I could make for
her. My grandmother, of course, negotiated it all; and Mrs. Sands knew of no
other person in the transaction. She proposed that they should take Ellen with
them to Washington and keep her till they had a good chance of sending her,
with friends, to Brooklyn. She had an infant daughter. I had a glimpse of it,
as the nurse passed with it in her arms. It was not a pleasant thought to me,
that the bondwoman's child should tend her free-born sister; but there was no
alternative. Ellen was made ready for the journey. O, how it tried my heart to send
her away, so young, alone, among strangers! Without a mother's love to shelter
her from the storms of life; almost without memory of a mother! I doubted
whether she and Benny would have for me the natural affection that children
feel for a parent. I thought to myself that I might perhaps never see my
daughter again, and I had a great desire that she should look upon me, before
she went, that she might take my image with her in her memory. It seemed to me
cruel to have her brought to my dungeon. It was sorrow enough for her young
heart to know that her mother was a victim of slavery, without seeing the
wretched hiding place to which it had driven her. I begged permission to pass
the last night in one of the open chambers, with my little girl. They thought I
was crazy to think of trusting such a young child with my perilous secret. I
told them I had watched her character, and I felt sure she would not betray me;
that I was determined to have an interview, and if they would not facilitate
it, I would take my own way to obtain it. They remonstrated against the
rashness of such a proceeding; but finding they could not change my purpose,
they yielded. I slipped through the trap-door into the storeroom, and my uncle
kept watch at the gate, while I passed into the piazza and went up stairs, to
the room I used to occupy. It was more than five years since I had seen it; and
how the memories crowded on me! There I had taken shelter when my mistress
drove me from her house; there came my old tyrant, to mock, insult, and curse
me; there my children were first laid in my arms; there I had watched over
them, each day with a deeper and sadder love; there I had knelt to God, in
anguish of heart, to forgive the wrong I had done. How vividly it all came
back! And after this long, gloomy interval, I stood there such a wreck! In the midst of
these meditations, I heard footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, and my
uncle Phillip came in, leading Ellen by the hand. I put my arms round her, and
said, "Ellen, my dear child, I am your mother." She drew back a
little, and looked at me; then, with sweet confidence, she laid her cheek
against mine, and I folded her to the heart that had been so long desolated.
She was the first to speak. Raising her head, she said, inquiringly, "You
really are my mother?" I told her I really was; that during all the
long time she had not seen me, I had loved her most tenderly; and that now she
was going away, I wanted to see her and talk with her, that she might remember
me. With a sob in her voice, she said, "I'm glad you've come to see me;
but why didn't you ever come before? Benny and I have wanted so much to see
you! He remembers you, and sometimes he tells me about you. Why didn't you come
home when Dr. Flint went to bring you?" I answered,
"I couldn't come before, dear. But now that I am with you, tell me whether
you like to go away." "I don't know," said she, crying.
"Grandmother says I ought not to cry; that I am going to a good place,
where I can learn to read and write, and that by and by I can write her a
letter. But I shan't have Benny, or grandmother, or uncle Phillip, or any body
to love me. Can't you go with me? O, do go, dear mother!" I told her I
couldn't go now, but sometime I would come to her, and then she and Benny and I
would live together, and have happy times. She wanted to run and bring Benny to
see me now. I told her he was going to the north, before long, with uncle
Phillip, and then I would come to see him before he went away. I asked if she
would like to have me stay all night and sleep with her. "O, yes,"
she replied. Then, turning to her uncle, she said, pleadingly, "May I
stay? Please, uncle! She is my own mother." He laid his hand on her head,
and said, solemnly, "Ellen, this is the secret you have promised
grandmother never to tell. If you ever speak of it to any body, they will never
let you see your grandmother again, and your mother can never come to Brooklyn."
"Uncle," she replied, "I will never tell." He told her she
might stay with me; and when he had gone, I took her in my arms and told her I
was a slave, and that was the reason she must never say she had seen me. I
exhorted her to be a good child, to try to please the people where she was
going, and that God would raise her up friends. I told her to say her prayers,
and remember always to pray for her poor mother, and that God would permit us
to meet again. She wept, and I did not check her tears. Perhaps she would never
again have a chance to pour her tears into a mother's bosom. All night she
nestled in my arms, and I had no inclination to slumber. The moments were too
precious to lose any of them. Once, when I thought she was asleep, I kissed her
forehead softly, and she said, "I am not asleep, dear mother." Before dawn they
came to take me back to my den. I drew aside the window curtain, to take a last
look of my child. The moonlight shone on her face, and I bent over her, as I
had done years before, that wretched night when I ran away. I hugged her close
to my throbbing heart; and tears, too sad for such young eyes to shed, flowed
down her cheeks, as she gave her last kiss, and whispered in my ear,
"Mother, I will never tell." And she never did. When I got back
to my den, I threw myself on the bed and wept there alone in the darkness. It
seemed as if my heart would burst. When the time for Ellen's departure drew
nigh, I could hear neighbors and friends saying to her, "Good by, Ellen. I
hope your poor mother will find you out. Won't you be glad to see
her!" She replied, "Yes, ma'am;" and they little dreamed of the
weighty secret that weighed down her young heart. She was an affectionate
child, but naturally very reserved, except with those she loved, and I felt
secure that my secret would be safe with her. I heard the gate close after her,
with such feelings as only a slave mother can experience. During the day my
meditations were very sad. Sometimes I feared I had been very selfish not to
give up all claim to her, and let her go to Illinois, to be adopted by Mrs.
Sands's sister. It was my experience of slavery that decided me against it. I
feared that circumstances might arise that would cause her to be sent back. I
felt confident that I should go to New York myself; and then I should be able
to watch over her, and in some degree protect her. Dr. Flint's
family knew nothing of the proposed arrangement till after Ellen was gone, and
the news displeased them greatly. Mrs. Flint called on Mrs. Sands's sister to
inquire into the matter. She expressed her opinion very freely as to the
respect Mr. Sands's showed for his wife, and for his own character, in
acknowledging those "young niggers." And as for sending Ellen away,
she pronounced it to be just as much stealing as it would be for him to come
and take a piece of furniture out of her parlor. She said her daughter was not
of age to sign the bill of sale, and the children were her property; and when
she became of age, or was married, she could take them, wherever she could lay
hands on them. Miss Emily
Flint, the little girl to whom I had been bequeathed, was now in her sixteenth
year. Her mother considered it all right and honorable for her, or her future
husband, to steal my children; but she did not understand how any body could
hold up their heads in respectable society, after they had purchased their own
children, as Mr. Sands had done. Dr. Flint said very little. Perhaps he thought
that Benny would be less likely to be sent away if he kept quiet. One of my
letters, that fell into his hands, was dated from Canada; and he seldom spoke
of me now. This state of things enabled me to slip down into the storeroom more
frequently, where I could stand upright and move my limbs more freely. Days, weeks, and
months passed, and there came no news of Ellen. I sent a letter to Brooklyn,
written in my grandmother's name, to inquire whether she had arrived there.
Answer was returned that she had not. I wrote to her in Washington; but no
notice was taken of it. There was one person there, who ought to have had some
sympathy with the anxiety of the child's friends at home; but the links of such
relations as he had formed with me, are easily broken and cast away as rubbish.
Yet how protectively and persuasively he once talked to the poor, helpless
slave girl! And how entirely I trusted him! But now suspicions darkened my
mind. Was my child dead, or had they deceived me, and sold her? If the secret
memoirs of many members of Congress should be published, curious details would
be unfolded. I once saw a letter from a member of Congress to a slave, who was
the mother of six of his children. He wrote to request that she would send her
children away from the great house before his return, as he expected to be
accompanied by friends. The woman could not read, and was obliged to employ
another to read the letter. The existence of the colored children did not
trouble this gentleman, it was only the fear that friends might recognize in
their features a resemblance to him. At the end of six months, a letter came to my grandmother, from Brooklyn. It was written by a young lady in the family, and announced that Ellen had just arrived. It contained the following message from her: "I do try to do just as you told me to, and I pray for you every night and morning." I understood that these words were meant for me; and they were a balsam to my heart. The writer closed her letter by saying, "Ellen is a nice girl, and we shall like to have to have her with us. My cousin, Mr. Sands, has given her to me, to be my little waiting maid. I shall send her to school, and I hope some day she will write to you herself." This letter perplexed and troubled me. Had my child's father merely placed her there till she was old enough to support herself? Or had he given her to his cousin, as a piece of property? If the last idea was correct, his cousin might return to the south at any time, and hold Ellen as a slave. I tried to put away from me the painful thought that such a foul wrong could have been done to us. I said to myself, "Surely there must be some justice in man;" then I remembered, with a sigh, how slavery perverted all the natural feelings of the human heart. It gave me a pang to look on my light-hearted boy. He believed himself free; and to have him brought under the yoke of slavery, would be more than I could bear. How I longed to have him safely out of the reach of its power! |