The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-01 00:00:00

SLAVERY.

INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF A FUGITIVE

SLAVE.
(From the Cork Southern Reporter.)

On Tuesday an influential and numerously attended meet-
ing of the citizens was held in the City Court-house, to hear
the statement of Mr. Frederick Douglas, himself " a fugitive
slave," relative to slavery in America, and also to give
expression to public opinion against that atrocious and cruel
system.

The meeting was announced for two o'clock, but long be-
fore that hour the Court-house was densely crowded in
every part. The grand jury gallery was thronged with
ladies, who seemed to take the liveliest interest in the pro-
ceedings. His Worship the Mayor entered the court a little
after two o'clock, accompanied by Mr. Buffum, an American
gentleman, and Mr. Frederick Douglas, who certainly ap-
peared a noble specimen of the race to which he belonged
The oratorical powers possessed by Mr. Douglas were a mat-
ter of admiration, nay, astonishment, during the progress of
the speech he delivered. To facility and power of expression
he joined a most impressive and energetic delivery, with
the most humorous method of exposing the hypocrisy and
duplicity of some of the American slaveholders. In fact,
his powers in this latter respect literally kept the meeting in
a roar.

The MATon, on taking the chair, explained the object for
which the meeting had been convened. The cause of human
liberty should not be limited to any country or clime, and he
was sure it would be readily taken up by an Irish audience.
Whatever might be the condition of men who wore badly
fed, and badly paid, still they stood intellectually and every
other way higher than those who were made mere chattel
goods, and beaten without mercy or consideration.—(Cheers.)
They had many things to do to elevate their own country,
but they had not to get rid of the lash, and the privilege
they enjoyed of personal freedom they should strive to ex-
tend to all mankind.—(Loud cheering.) They were only
asked to extend to the American continent the exertions and
influence which worked so much good in their own islands.
His Worship here alluded to the exertions of Mr. O'Connell
in the cause of freedom, observing that it must be gratifying
to him to reflect that those exertions had been attended with
many and signal triumphs. (Loud cheers.) He (the
speaker) held it to be spurious philosophy, and worse morals,
to suppose that he, into whom the Deity had breathed a
living soul, should be less than man, merely because of the
darkness of his skin. They had many instances to show
that, however they differed outwardly in colour, the soul was
of one colour, and that was bright and noble.—(Applause.)
Mr. MAnnit proposed the first resolution.
The Rev. Mr. WHITLEGG seconded it. He wished to express
the pleasure he felt in attending such a meeting. It was said
if they went abroad to look for grievances they would be
neglectful of their duties at home ; but facts disproved the
assertion, for among the mostt,strenuous advocates of freedom
abroad were to be found the most untiring supporters of
liberty and peace at home.—(Cheers.)
Mr. BUFFUM proposed the next resolution. The kind and
sympathetic manner in which he was received in Cork more
than compensated him for all he suffered in the anti-slavery
cause. He was mobbed, his life was in danger, but what of
that, he felt it a glory to mingle in the strife—(Applause)—
to take part in the emancipation of his countrymen in bonds.
The cause of freedom in one country was intimately con-
nected with the same cause in another, and if they con-
tributed to break off the shackles of American slavery, the
latter country would'then be better able to assist them in
turn.— (Cheers.) How could America labour for the eleva-
tion of any class of people, while she had in her own bosom
three millions of slaves? The speaker here observed that
Frederick Douglas, who had been twenty years in slavery,
and had experienced its horrors, would address the meeting,
so that it would not be necessary for him to tresspass on them
further.

Mr. BESNAED said that justice was so fully understood by
a Cork audience that he would say no more than merely
second the resolution.
Counsellor MAGUIRE proposed the third resolution. It
was a matter of record that in spite of the renown of America
—(Cheers)—her slavery system made her the most degraded
country on the face of the earth. The boasted free institu-
tions of America were only a mockery and a scorn, because
they were tainted with slavery at the heart's core.
Mr. FREDERICK Dona Las then came forward amid loud
cheering. He said—Sir, I never more than at present lacked
words to express my feelings. The cordial and manly
reception I have met with, and the spirit of freedom that
seems to animate the bosoms of the entire audience, have
filled my heart with feelings I am incapable of expressing.
I stand before you in the most extraordinary position that
one human being ever stood before his race—a slave—
a slave not in the ordinary sense of the term, not in a
political sense, but in its real and intrinsic meaning.
I have not been stripped of one of my rights and privi-
leges, but of all. By the laws of the country whence I
came, I was deprived of myself—of my own body, soul, and
spirit, and I am free only because I succeeded in escaping
the clutches of the man who claimed me as his property.
There are fourteen slave States in America, and I was sold
as a slave at a very early age, little more than seven years,
in the southern part of Maryland. While there I conceived
the idea of escaping into one of the free States, which I even-
tually succeeded in accomplishing. On the 3rd Sept., 1838,
I made my escape into Massachussets, a free State, and it is a
pleasing coincidence that just seven years after I stood up in
the Royal Exchange in Dublin. to unfold to the people of
that good city the wrongs and sufferings to which my race
in America were exposed.—(Applause.) On escaping into
Massachussets, I went to work on the quays, rolling oil casks
to get a livelihood, and in about three years after, having been
induced to attend an anti-slavery meeting at Nantucket, it
expose their nefarious system. For four years I was then
was there announced that I should go from town to town to
engaged in discussing the slavery question, and during that
time I had opportunities of arranging my thoughts and
language. It was at least doubted if I had ever been a slave,
and this doubt being used to injure the anti-slavery cause, I
was induced to set the matter at rest by publishing the nar-
rative of my life. A person undertaking to write a book
without learning will appear rather novel, but such as it was
I gave it to the public.—(Hear, hear.) The excitement at
least increased so much that it was thought better for me to
get out of the way lest my master might use some stratagem
to get me back into his clutches. I am here then in order
to avoid the scent of the bloodhounds of America, and of
spreading light on the subject of her slave system. There
is nothing slavery, dislikes half so much as the light. It is a
gigantic system of iniquity, that feeds and lives in darkness,
and, like a tree with its roots turned to the sun, it perishes
when exposed to the light.—(Loud cheering.) We want to
arouse public indignation against the system of slavery, and to
bring the concentrated execrations of the civilised world to
bear on it like a thunderbolt.—(Loud cheering.) The rela-
tion of master and slave in America should be clearly under-
stood. The master is allowed by law to hold his slave as his
possession and property, which means the right of one man
to hold property in his fellow. The master can buy,
sell, bequeath his slave as well as any other pro-
perty, nay, he shall decide what the poor slave is to
eat, what. he is to drink, where and when he shall
speak. He also decides for his affections, when and whom
he is to marry, and, what is more enormous, how long that
marriage covenant is to endure. The slaveholder exercises
the bloody power of tearing asunder those whom God had
joined together—of separating husband from wife, parent
from child, and of leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth de-
solate.—(Sensation.) The slaveholders of America resort to
every species of cruelty, but they caa never reduce the slave
to a willing obedience. The natural elasticity of the human
soul repels the slightest attempt to enslave it. The black
slaves of America are not wholly without that elasticity ;
they are men, and, being so, they do not submit readily to
the yoke.—(Great cheering.) It is easy to keep a brute in
the position of a brute, but when you undertake to place a
man in the same state, believe me you must build your fences
higher, and your doors firmer than before. A brute you may
molest sometimes with impunity, but never a man. Men—
the black slaves of America—are capable of resenting an in-
sult, of revenging an outrage, and of looking defiance at
their masters.—(Applause.) Oftentimes, when the poor
slave, after recovering . from the application of the
scourge and the branding
.iron, looks at his master with a
face indicating dissatisfaction, he is subjected to fresh punish-
ment. That cross look must be at once repulsed, and the
master whips, as he says,
." the d-1 out of him ;" for when
a slave looks dissatisfied with his condition, according to his
cruel taskmaster's idea, he looks as if he had the devil in him,
and it must be whipped out.—_(oh, oh.) The state of slavery
is one of perpetual cruelty. When very young, as I stated,
was sold into slavery, and was placed under the control of a
little boy who had orders to kick me when he liked ; whenever
the little boy got cross, his mother used to say " Go and
whip Freddy." I, however, soon began to reason upon the
matter, and found that I had as good a right to kick Tommy
soon
will appeared
ga, down
and
wa
as Tommy had me.—(Loud laughter," and cheering.) My
dissatisfaction with my
'e is worse, I feel the scourge
st
I was most brutally treated. I stand before you with
condi7tiohinp,
sotho
a
of slavery itself piercing into my heart, crushing my
withthe m
me marks ks
to of
my the
grave s l a
;v slave-driver's vwehr
feelings, and sinking me into the depths of moral and intel-
lectual degradation.—(Loud cheering.) In the South, the
laws are exceedingly cruel, more so than in the northern
States. The most cruel feature of the system in the northern
States is the slave trade. The domestic slave trade of Ame-
rica is now in the height of its prosperity from the annexa-
tion of Texas to our Union. In the northern States they
actually breed slaves, and rear them for the southern mar-
kets; and the constant dread of being sold is often more
terrible than the reality itself. Here the speaker proceeded
to comment upon the law of America relative to the
punishment of slaves, and , read the following:—
" If more than seven slaves are found together in any road,
without a white person—twenty lashes apiece. For visit-
ing a plantation without a written pass—ten lashes. For
letting loose a boat from where it is made fast—thirty-nine
lashes ; and for the second offence, shall have his ear cut off.
For having an article for sale without a ticket from his
master—ten lashes. For being on horseback without the
written permission of his master—twenty-five lashes."
I saw one poor woman (continued the speaker) who had
her ear nailed to a post, for attempting to run away, but the
agony she endured was so great, that she tore away, and left
her ear behind.—(Great sensation). This is the law of Ame-
rica after her declaration of independence—the 'land in
which are millions of professed Christians, and which sup-
ports their religion at a cost of twenty millions dollars an-
nually, and yet she has three millions of human beings the
subjects of the hellish laws I have read. We would not ask
you to interfere with the politics of America, or involve
your military aid to put down American slavery, No, we
only demand your moral and religious influence on the slave
in question, and believe me the effects of that influence will
be overwhelming.—(Cheers.) We want to awaken the slave
holder to a sense of the iniquity of his position, and to draw
him. from his nefarious habits. We want to encircle Ame •
rica with a girdle of Anti-slavery fire, that will. reflect
tight upon the darkness of the slave institutions, and alarm
their guilty upholders.—(Great applause.) It must also
be ;stated that the American pulpit is on the side of sla-
very, and the Bible is blasphemously quoted in support of
it. The ministers of religion actually quoted Scripture in
support of the most cruel and bloody outrages on the slaves.
My own master was:a Methodist class-leader—(Laughter. and
"Oh")—and he bared the neck of a young woman, in my
presence, and he cut her with a cow skin. He then went
away, and when he returned to complete the castigation, he
quoted the passage : " He that knoweth his master's will and
doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes."—(Laughter.)
The preachers say to the slaves they should obey their
masters, because God commands it, and because their happi-
ness depended on it.—(A laugh.) Here the speaker assumed
the attitude and drawling manner so characteristic of the
American preachers, amid the laughter of all present, and
continued—Thus do these hypocrites cant. They also tell the
slaves there is no happiness but in obedience, and wherever
you see poverty and misery, be sure it results from dis-
obedience.—(Laughter.) In order to illustrate this they
tell a story of a slave having been sent to work,
and when his master came up, he found poor
Sambo asleep. Picture the feelings, say they, of that pious
master, his authority thrown off, and his work not done.
The master then goes to the law and the testimony, and he
there read the passage I have already quoted, and Sambo is
lashed so that he cannot work for a week after. Your
servants continued the preacher, " To what was this whipping
traceable, to disobedience, and if von would not be whipped,
and if yon bask in the sunshine of your master's favour, let
me exhort you to obedience. Y., should also be grateful
that God in his mercy brought you from Africa to this
Christian land."—(Great laughter.) They also tell the
wretched slaves that God make them to do the working, and
the white nun the thinking. And such is the Ignorance in

which the slaves are held that some of them go home and
say, "Me hear a good serman to-day, de minister make
ebery thing so clear, whiteman above a nigger any
day.—(Roars of laughter.) It is punishable with
death for the second attempt to teach a slave his let-
ters in America—(Loud expressions of disgust)—and in that
Protestant country the slave is denied the privilege of learn-
ing the name of the God that made him. Slavery, with all
its bloody paraphernalia, is upheld by the Church of the
country. We want them to have the Methodists of Ireland
speak to those of America, and say, " While your hands are
red with blood, while the thumb-screws and gags, and whips,
are wrapped up in the pontifical robes of your Church, we
will have no fellowship with you, or acknowledge you Chris-
tians."—(Great applause.) There are men who come here
and preach, whose robes are yet red with blood, but these
things should not be. Let these American Christians know
their hands are too red to be grasped by Irishmen. Presby-
terians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Roman Ca-
tholics, stand forth to the world and declare to the American
Church, that until she puts away slavery, you 'can have no
sympathy or fellowship with them.—(Applause.) For myself
I believe in Christianity. I love it. I love that religion
which is from above, without partiality or hypocrisy—that
religion based upon that broad, that world-embracing prin-
ciple, "That whatever you would that men should do to you,
do ye even so to them."—(Loud cheering). In America
Bible and slave-holders go hand in hand. The Church and
the slave prison stand together, and while you hear the
chaunting of psalms in one, you hear the clanking of chains
in the other. The man who wields the cow-hide during
the week, fills the pulpit on Sunday—here we have robbery
and religion united—devils dressed in angels' garments. The
man who whipped me in the week used to attend to show me
the way of life on the Sabbath. I cannot proceed without
alluding to a man who did much to abolish slavery, I mean
Daniel O'Connell.—(Loud cheers.) I feel grateful to him,
for his voice has made American slavery shake to its centre.
I am determined wherever I go, and whatever position I
may fill, to speak with grateful emotions of Mr. O'Connell's
labours.—(Cheering.) I heard his denunciation of slavery,
I heard my master curse him, and therefore I loved him.
—(Great cheering.) In London, Mr. O'Connell tore off the
mask of hypocrisy from the slaveholders, and branded
them as the vilest of the vile and the most execrable of
the execrable, for no man can put words together stronger
than Mr. O'Connell.—(Laughter and cheering.) The
speaker proceeded at some length, and related amusing
anecdotes connected with his history in the United States.
In one instance be was travelling to Vermont, and hav-
ing arrived at a stage, they took in five new paisen-
gers. It being dark at the time, they did not know the
colour of his (the speaker's) skin, and he was treated with all
manner of respect. In fact he could not help thinking at the
time that he would be a great man if perpetual darkness
would only take the day of place. Scarcely, however,
had the light gilded the green mountains of Vermont than
he saw one of the chaps in the coach take a sly peep at him
and whisper to another "Egad, after all, 'tis a nigger."—
(Great laughter.) He had black looks for the remainder o
the way, and disrespect. That feeling of prejudice had now
changed, and he could now walk through Boston in the most
refined company. The speaker concluded by saying that he
would again address them during his stay in Cork.
Mr. VARIAN proposed a vote of thanks to Mr. Martin for
influencing Fred. Douglas and Mr. Buffum to pay them a visit.
Mr. W. C. LOGAN seconded it. It was owing to the ex-
ertions of the " Friends " that West Indian slavery was
abolished, and surely as one of that community, the citizens
of Cork could not withhold their thanks and admiration from
William Martin.—(Cheers.) Allusion was made to Mr.
O'Connell, and he had also the pleasure of hearing him in
London, and of listening to his eloquent denunciations of
slavery, by which the spirit of the nation was roused against
the system.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. MARTIN said he did not expect the vote of thanks, but
all he had to say was, that he was an abominator of slavery
for the last fifty years.—(Loud cheers.)
Alderman T. LYONS was then moved to the chair, and a
vote of thanks proposed by Alderman A. ROCHE to his
Worship, for his dignified conduct while in the chair, and his
efforts in the cause of suffering humanity.
The vote of thanks was carried by acclamation, and the
meeting adjourned.