The Sable Cloud | Page 4

least compunction? We are constantly
told,--has she not heard it?--that the slave at the South is a mere
"chattel," and that a slave-child is bought and sold as recklessly as a
calf, and that a parting between a slave-mother and her children, sold
and separated for life, is an occurrence as familiar as the separation of
animals and their young, and no more regarded by slave-holders than
divorcements in the barn-yard. This being so, it must follow that when
a slave-babe dies, the only sorrow in the hearts of the white owners is
such as they feel when a colt is kicked to death or a heifer is choked.
This must be so, if all is true which is meant to be conveyed when we
are told so often at the North that the slave is a mere "chattel."
Therefore I am puzzled by this lady's tears for the mother of this little
black babe. She says of the mother of that poor little negro infant slave,
"I knew she did not dream what the parting would be." I repeat it, my
theory of slavery, that which I hold in common with all enlightened
friends of freedom, requires that this lady should have a debased,
imbruted nature, for she owns human beings, has made property of
God's image in man. And now I feel creeping over me a dreadful
temptation to think that one may hold fellow-creatures in bondage and
yet be really humane, gentle, and as good as a Northerner! What fearful
changes in politics would come about should our people believe this! It
cannot be that our great party of Freedom can ever go to pieces and
disappoint the hopes of the world; yet this would be the case, if the
feelings stirred by this letter should gain a general acceptance. I cannot
gainsay the facts. Here is the letter. May it never see the light; people
are much more influenced by such things than by mere logic, and oh,
what would befall the nation should our Northern excitement against
slavery cease, and should we leave the whole subject to the South and
to God! "What if people should come to believe that the
Southerners--fifteen or sixteen States of this Union--are as humane,
Christian, and conscientious as the North!
Who will resolve my painful doubts? I do crave to know what possible
motive this lady could have had in taking so much thought and care
about the last resting-place of this poor little black "chattel." You and

your husband, dear lady, seem to be as kind and painstaking as though
you knew that a fellow-creature of yours was returning, "ashes to ashes,
dust to dust."
One great Northern "friend of the slave" tells us that the slaves at the
South are degraded so to the level of brutes, that baptizing them and
admitting them to Christian ordinances is about the same as though he
should say to his dogs, "I baptize thee, Bose, in," etc. This, he tells us,
he repeated many times here, and in England.[1] Nothing but love of
truth and just hatred of "the sum of all villanies" could, of course, have
made him venture so near the verge of unpardonable blasphemy as to
speak thus. Yet your feelings and behavior toward this babe are in
direct conflict with his theory. Pray whom am I to believe?
[Footnote 1: See "Sigma's" communications to the Boston Transcript,
August, 1857.]
Perhaps now I have hit upon a solution. Some people, Walter Scott is
an instance, bury their favorite dogs with all the honors of a decorated
sepulture. Rather than believe that your slaves are commonly regarded
by you as your fellow-creatures, having rights which you love to
consider, or, that you do not mercilessly dispose of them to promote
your selfish interests, we, the Northern people, who have had the very
best of teachers on the subject of slavery, learnedly theoretical,
reasoning from the eternal principles of right, would incline to believe
that your interest in the burial of this little slave-babe was merely that
which your own child would feel on seeing her kitten carefully buried
at the foot of the apple-tree.
One thing, however, suggests a difficulty in feeling our way to this
conclusion. I mention it because of the perfect candor which guides the
sentiments and feelings of all Northern people in speaking of slavery
and slave-holders.
The difficulty is this: Who was "poor old Timmy"? Some old slave in
your father's family, I apprehend. You seem sad at finding that his
grave is not in the best place. "The water rises within three feet of the
surface;"--we infer, from the regret which you seem to feel at this, that

you have some care and pity for your old slaves, which extends even to
their graves.