Morning journal and courier., 1881-08-05


 and was dead at the very outset of his ca reer. Among the slaves left in his estate was an intelligent, high-strung oetoroon boy, | named Lewis Clarke, who had been granted | comparative freedom, in being allowed to 1 travel about with an open pass, trading, | weaving and occupying himself as he pleased, | paying his master 8 certain sum every month. | When the estate came to be settled it was | discovered that some of the slaves must be l sold, and an execution was issued against | Lewis among the others. The rumor got | out-and at that day the rumor was dread. | full one among slaveS-that they were to be 'sold down South." On the first night of September court in 1941 Lewis Clarke mounted his pony and struck for liberty He was as white as the fairest Circassian in Garrard, with Scottish shrewdness merit ed from his father, 8 white man, and long, ing for liberty which had obtained for him the reputation, so depreciatory of slave val ues, of being "spoilt nigger." He rode away and over the hills to Ohio and Canada. Then he went to Cambridge, Mass, lived for seven years with A. H. Stafford, brother in- law of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe Mrs. ] Stowe visited her relations every summer, and took deep interest in Lewis Clarke, his experience and his narrative of incidents, pathetic, humorous and terrible, of slave life, and the horrors which the system made possible, and which were in localities, fre- quent, from ssbrutal and irresponsible mas ters. She took full notes of all he told and afterwards put them to the use which made the entire republic tremble when 'sUncle Toms Cabin'' made it's appearance in 1853. Meanwhile, however, Lewis Clarke had dic- tated the story of his own harsh experience to J. c. Lovejoy, of Cambridge, Mass, and it was published in book form in 1S45, with this title Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke During a Captivity of More than Twenty-Five Years Among the Agerines of Kentucky, one of AL, O..N I1aI s,45.- u. America" Many copies of it were sold, but it created so much excite ment that several thousand copies were sup pressed and the plates destroyed. There are few copies of this in existence and have been permitted to read probably the only copy in Kentucky. It details certainly 8 very wretched and cruel story of ll-treatment during his childhood before he became the slave of the Kennedys. From Lewis Clarke's own lips gathered to-day the story of how | Mrs. Stowe came to write 'fUncle Toms Cabin' Dr. Bailey, who published the FIilGntHroptst in Cincinnati, had been per | suaded to remove to Washington city about ! 1848 or 1850, where he established an eman- | cipationist organ. the National Era. When | the fugitive slave law passed, it produced | such an impression upon the country, and was so strongly sustained by the press, and | even by the pulpit, that the emancipationists ! were paralyzed for some time. The NGt5ozl- ag Era lost circulation steadily, and was on the point of execution, when Dr. Bailey went to ! New York to consult some leading enamel ! pationists as to what course he should pur- ! sue He thought if he could get some wo- \ man of literary reputation and ability to | write series of articles every week on the ! subject of slavery and its violation of the | finest sentiments that it would revive public ' interest and carry his paper to people it had never reached before. The names of Mrs. Lydia M. Child and others were proposed, N I, r,14oa ,ko1 y1,o
 one of the counselors, finally said he knew of one woman who could do the work suc- cessfully; that she was poor and must be | paid for it, but that she would succeed. He ! then mentioned Mrs. Stowe, and advised Dr. | Bailey to write to her and by way of earnest, | inclose her a draft for s1oO. The letter was | written and the draft sent. The next week | there appeared in the columns of the NG- | ti070I Era, not the first of series of articles
 on slavery, but the first chapters of 8 story
 called Uncle Toms Cabin" The effect was
 instantaneous and great. The scenes de- | ineated with such frequent strokes of elo-
 quent simplicity and covered with the son.
 breness o& Christian abhorrenee of the slave | system, went home to the readers imagina-
 tion with wonderful force. The circulation
 of the National Era increased at once, and
 soon became very large. Mrs. Stowe was ! poor and earning her money so laboriously
 that, for fear the great novel would be cut
 short, she was sent an additional draft for
 $500. Then she copyrighted the story,
 which in book form has made her fortune
 and become more famous than any nove
 ever issued from printing press.
 | In the book she wove all the facts giver ! her by Lewis Clarke, in connection with in
 formation gleaned elsewhere For instance | the first part of the character and story oi
 Uncle Tom himself was taken from the ex l perience of a colored preacher. Josiah He Hen ! son, who had both arms broken below tht ' +1v kF ord off -,
 the club of brutal overseer. The broker 1 bones were not set, and the arms grew up SC | distorted that Henson cannot now feed him 1 self. The whipping to death of Old Ton
 was suggested by the fate of Sam Peter,
 blacksmith on the Kentucky plantation whc
 was swung up by his hands to the limbs of {
 locust tree (under whose sweet blossoms
 Clarke stood this morning and recited tn,
 story afresh) and given several hundred
 lashes and ''salted." Two weeks later ht I was dead, and Clarke heard him say to hi mother, in the words Old Tom used, tsMoth ! er tell master he has killed me at last fol l nothing; but tell him if God will forgive | him, I can." Clarke cut bunch of locus
 blossoms from the tree, as a relic to beal away with him. There were some terribI, l masters in this section fifty or seventy-iv. , years ago. Among them General Kennedy l Devil Bill Adams, William Woods, Archy . | Woods, Eben Best and others are still quoted
 among the old negroes with awe and horror It was the day of plantations almost ducal il
 extent and value, of the aggressive spirit O. , ! personal authority and ostentation, whicl the adventurous survivors of revolutionary
 fields brought with them from the camp anc ] the field of royal sport on the turf, at tn, ! card table and at faro. The Crab Orchard ! pike was the high road for the rich drover 1 with their herds from Tennessee Here the,
 rested en route, and at the old Kentuck, , ! mansion play has gone high, and many de { termined deed of valor, and many desper , ate, vain folly have been done.
 This was half a century ago; Lewis Clark , ran away ten years later yesterday he re turned, as one of his friends said, like Moses
 after wandering forty years in the wilder ness, to lead those he left behind up to the
 heights. This morning was the first tim, ] since he fled that he has stood upon tn, !, ! ground where he saw so much that wal dreadful and so much that was in it's way } pleasant, for slave life was by turns 8 smil, and moan.
 It is a sing ular fact that in this neighbor | hood, whence sprung the most powerful story of oppression and suffering that wa , ever written, he stood last night in the pulpi of handsome village church, built, paid fo and owned by some of the very negroes whose wrongs and hardships pitched the ke, | of the story He could look out of one win dow and see on 8 sister hill another churcl , owned and paid for by the same people | WuH0 over 1n FdI16y not Ihr ulSbau6 BUS | modest school house, where all day long
 black school teacher sits in the midst of flock of black urchins teaching them how t, 3 read and spell, the very knowledge that wa
 then tabooed as forbidden fruit The whicl
 Lewis Clarke aided in producing tand no F body who reads his narrative can doub where Mrs Stowe got most of her facts ant : suggestions) He had as much to do with pro : ducing this result as all the politicalpower O
 the country combined. It gave political lead CTS following from quiet homes, where de ], termination is bred.
 The facility with which Americans adop advancement and see quickly the moral valu of progress could not be better illustrates
 than It is in the return of Lewis Clarke to tn scene of his servitude. Forty years ago h
 left here stealthily by night on his pony l slave seeking his freedom, with death threat
 ening failure; he was young man of twen ty-seyen or thirty, with no education. Tn ]. other day he alighted from the railroad trail 3 which whizzes through the village, an oil ] man with white hair, grey beard and wrinkle , forehead, but free, educated and with wid [ | reputation in the northeast. He went ava,
 seeking his own freedom and helped give