Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1848-06-29
Slavery and Suicide.

We take the following thrilling account of one
of the most tragic and heroic acts, to be found
on record from the Louisville (Ky) Examiner
IIorrid as is the story, no man whose heart beats
with one pulsation of freedom, can but admire
the chivalry that prompted and the more than
Roman firmness with which the act was consul
mated. And yet the so-called Democratic party
have adopted platform, and nominated Pres.
idental candidate, to carry an institution which
produces such results, into territories never vet
cursed by the deadly upas of human slavery We
ask Christian Democrats to read this story, and
then ask themselves if any party deserving the
Democratic name can pander to such wrongs
"a man named Rush, had purchased, up the
Licking negro fellow, wife and child The
slaves objected. Both the negro and his wife
protested against being separated or sent South.
But the sale was made; they were brought to
Covington, and, for safe keeping, lodged in Jail
until they could be shipped for Louisiana
While in Jail, the negro man resolved first
that he would not go South. His wife said rath-
err, than do that and be separated, | wish you to
cut my throat Both then resolved upon self
destruction. But the child Could they con-
sent to imbrue their hands in its blood? AVE
was the mothers response-rather than it should
90 South, and be separated from US, let it be
DONE Deliberately did that mother do the
deed-deliberately offer her throat to be cut
by her husband, who made the fatal cash, and
as deliberately did he attempt to take his own
life.
They are all dead These three slaves, faith
er, wife and child, nameless, unknown, lie I'M
der the cold earth, and the event is with God
We cannot justify any human being in taking
his own life, or the lives of others. The bare
idea of father cody killing his child, wife and
then himself, shocks US. Yet on hearing of this
tragic scene at Covington, and the cause oft, we
could not but feel and say, there was wild he
roism in the act, which robs it of its horror If
such a deed had occurred in old Rome, and in
the best days Of Roman manhood, the doors of
it would have been heralded forth, and handed
down to us, in song, story, and historic descrip-
ton, as among the greatest, loftiest characters
Christianity teaches us other views, and high
er duty But even Christianity, while condemns
ing the act, bids us sorrow over and sympa,hise
with the dead, who for love of home, who rather
than be torn from each other, died thus by their
own hands.
How stirrngy does this fatal act appeal to
every man, woman and child in Kentucky, to
protest against the separation of families
There be those who say, slaves care very lit
tie about such separation We know better all
Of lis. We know that their feelings are kind,
their attachments strong their love of kindred
and home abiding. True, these feelings and
attachments, and this love- are weakened, some
times deadened, because marriages are not le-
gdLized, and because they dare not fix them
But despite of this, there is not plantation, not
neighborhood, not a country, in which slaves
do not show the highest, hottest affection, when
torn from their families, or driven away from the
old homestead. Have you, reader, attended an
administrator sale, when old settled families,
were put up for sale, and not heard the wall and
shrek Of women, or witnessed the grief oppress-
ing and crushing stout menl Have you never
been at the Court House, when under legal &C.
tion the father was about to be borne away for
ever from wife and children, and seen the unut
terable anguish which overwhelmed them?-
They do love each other. They love kind mas
tiers. And no Southern man at all conversant
with the negro's nature, or familiar with his hab
its, will pretend to deny the fact. What car
! we say in defence of a law which allows family
ties to be broken at any moment? What plei
put in, what justification offer, for code which
annihates at one blow the marriage rite, ant
all the sacredness of homel What say, whel
j., death is deliberately sought by slave HUSBAND
and slave wife, rather than submit to separation
= or endure the pangs which such separation woul
y nhct?